US embassy cable - 04PRETORIA5233

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PRETORIA 005233 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, SF 
SUBJECT: GENDER VIOLENCE CAMPAIGN HIGHLIGHTS CONFLICTING 
STATUS OF WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 
1. SUMMARY.  The South African Government's "16 Days of 
Activism" gender violence awareness campaign brings into 
focus the conflicting status of women in South Africa.  South 
Africa leads the region in the number of women at the 
parliamentary, cabinet, and deputy minister levels.  NGOs, 
however, describe South Africa as a "war zone for women," 
singling out poverty, gender-based violence, and HIV/AIDS as 
the biggest problems facing South African women.  The chasm 
between government's good intentions and limited legislative 
success and the reality facing South African women is real. 
This is a society in transition; while much progress has been 
made, there is a long way to go.  END SUMMARY. 
 
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LOTS AT TOP 
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2. Following President Mbeki's April 28 appointment of 12 (of 
28) women ministers and 10 (of 21) women deputy ministers 
(three more women ministers and two more women deputy 
ministers than in the previous cabinet), South Africa leads 
the South African Development Community (SADC) countries in 
the representation of women at the parliamentary, cabinet, 
and deputy minister levels.  South Africa has not only 
surpassed the minimum 30 percent target of the 1997 SADC 
Declaration on Gender and Development -- with 33.4 percent of 
its MPs, 42.9 percent of its ministers, and 47.6 percent of 
its deputy ministers being women -- but it has also surpassed 
the African National Congress (ANC) target of 33 percent. 
 
3. There are lower percentages of women at the provincial and 
municipal levels of government.  The third annual conference 
of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) in 
2004 released a report saying the representation of women at 
the local level of government was 29.06 percent, slightly up 
from 28 percent in 2000.  The report also stated that 
political parties had few women candidates on their party 
lists and deployed even fewer to decision-making positions. 
Due to the perception of many delegates at the conference 
that the 29 percent figure was too low, Cape Town Mayor 
Nomainda Mfeketo said to loud applause, "The women in this 
conference are saying they want 50 percent.  They want 50 
percent because they realize that they are mothers of this 
nation." 
 
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RURAL WOMEN THE WORST OFF BY FAR 
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4. Outside of government, Sheilah Meintjes, Professor at the 
University of the Witwatersrand and a former Commissioner at 
the Commission on Gender Equality, says two of the biggest 
problems facing South African women are poverty and 
gender-based violence.  The majority of the 40 percent of 
unemployed South Africans are women, and even those women who 
are able to work often experience economic discrimination and 
sometimes sexual harassment.  In July, the Department of 
Labor and the Commission for Employment Equity launched a 
report showing that South African women have never held more 
than 21 percent of top management positions and that they 
earned an average of 76 percent of their male counterparts' 
wages. 
 
5. Meintjes calls gender-based violence "endemic" to South 
African society, and she notes that it crosses class and 
race.  She says it is embedded in the idea of "men as 
superior citizens" and forms a continuum from sexual 
harassment to rape to murder.  There are disputes over rape 
statistics, but the University of Cape Town's Unilever 
Institute of Strategic Marketing's 2004 gender survey 
indicated that South Africa may have the highest incidence of 
rape and wife battering in the world.  The same survey 
indicated that a women is raped every minute in South Africa, 
and that one-third of South African women are raped at some 
time during their lifetime. 
 
6. The situation for many South African women, especially 
those poor to begin with, is worsening due to HIV/AIDS and 
the "collapse of NGOs," according to Susan Bazilli, an 
advisor at the Center for Development and Population 
Activities (CEDPA), making "rural women the worst off they've 
been in ten years."  The "feminization" of HIV/AIDS has led 
to 20 South African women being infected for every 10 South 
African men, where there are more people living with HIV/AIDS 
in South Africa than anywhere in the world.  HIV/AIDS is not 
only killing women, it is also placing a larger burden on 
them as they struggle to look after children whose parents 
have died.  Bazilli also blames the worsening condition of 
rural women on the collapse of many NGOs due to donors' shift 
of resources from NGOs to government following the 
establishment of a democratic regime in 1994. 
 
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GOVERNMENT'S APPROACH 
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7. The three main bodies in the Government for dealing with 
gender issues are the constitutionally-mandated Commission on 
Gender Equality; the Office on the Status of Women and Gender 
Equality in the Presidency; and the Parliamentary Joint 
Monitoring Committee on the Quality of Life and Status of 
Women.  The first two, which are often viewed as rivals to 
each other, spend their time -- according to Meintjes -- 
"tinkering and tailoring."  They tinker to put policies in 
place, to get a critical mass of women in prominent 
positions; and they tailor organizations to make them gender 
sensitive through training.  But the Commission is swamped 
with more complaints than it can handle, and the Office on 
the Status of Women is mostly just an advisory body with only 
a small budget. 
 
8. The Parliamentary Joint Committee has seen through several 
important pieces of legislation on customary law, domestic 
violence, and child support.  Connie September, a Member of 
Parliament, thinks the high level of female representation at 
the national level has made a difference to South African 
women through making the law more gender friendly.  For 
example, South Africa is one of the few African countries 
with a law specifically targeting domestic violence.  In 
addition, the Justice for Women Campaign has successfully 
defended women for murdering their abusive partners.  On the 
other hand, Mmatshilo Motsei, a consultant for the Women's 
Legal Rights Initiative, said South Africa needs to move from 
the "victories" at the legislative and judicial levels to the 
"realities" in the rural areas. 
 
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FROM VICTORIES TO REALITIES 
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9. The "realities" speak for themselves: 80 percent of 
female-headed households have no wage earners; 40 percent of 
Black African households are headed by women; 60 percent of 
female-headed households are poor; 70 percent of South 
African children under six live below the poverty line; and 
the majority of these children are living in households with 
only one parent, where in most cases the parent is a woman. 
But how, then, to move to "victories"?  Some say changes need 
to be made in government and the private sector's 
institutional cultures, gender composition, and approaches 
towards human rights.  Motsei stresses that change can only 
be accomplished through the revitalization of NGOs, and still 
others say there needs to be more publicizing of the laws and 
more cooperation from men. 
 
10.  Most analysts agree that on a deeper level societal 
attitudes must change.  This includes the way parents raise 
their sons to be masculine protectors, who then become 
frustrated by the realities of not being able to work or 
otherwise support themselves or their families.  This also 
includes a broader acceptance of the higher levels of 
education that women have achieved over the past ten years. 
In this sense, the continuing gender gap and all the problems 
that go along with it remain not an indication of a 
schizophrenic society but of a society in transition.  The 16 
Days of Activism campaign, which President Mbeki says should 
really be 365 days, is part of this slow transition. 
FRAZER