This week on Womanity-Women in Unity, Dr. Amaleya Goneos-Malka talks to the Deputy Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces Sylvia Lucas from the African National Congress, who was formerly the Premier of the Northern Cape. Firstly, she differentiates between the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) from the National Assembly, emphasising the NCOP’s mandate to ensure provincial interests are taken into account. We discuss the nationwide review of the Women’s Charter, which addressed aspects of equality, fighting violence against women and girls and the state of implementation of articles in the Women’s Charter. Unfortunately, lack of implementation remains an ongoing concern. We discuss women in political leadership, remarking on the importance of pipeline processes to draw women through political structures and how the effects of patriarchy negatively impact on women’s perceptions of each other. The Deputy Chairperson highlights an example of the under representation of female ward councillors, in part attributed to the fact that female voters voted for male candidates over female candidates, which illustrates a lack of confidence or belief in their abilities. We consider ways to help encourage women to pursue leadership roles, from support, to mentorship and recognition. Paraphrasing her grandmother the Deputy Chair reminds us that, “Flowers can grow in the ghetto”. Tune in for more…
DR. MALKAJoining us on the line today is the Deputy Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, Ms. Sylvia Elizabeth Lucas, from the African National Congress. She was formally the Premier of the Northern Cape and she has served the African National Congress as well as the African National Congress’s Women’s League in various capacities, including the Provincial Working Committees. Welcome to the show Deputy Chairperson!DC LUCASGood morning Dr. Amaleya and good morning also to your listeners and thank you very much for having me on the show.DR. MALKAYou know Deputy Chairperson, this is the first time that we have actually had an interview with someone from the National Council of Provinces and as I understand it, the NCOP is one of two houses of parliament, the other being the National Assembly. A primary role of the NCOP is to ensure that provincial interests are taken into account within the national sphere of government; please can you tell us more about the NCOP?DC LUCASThe NCOP, as you have already said, is one of two houses of parliament. The one issue that I have realised is that very people really have a clear understanding of the second house; the National Council of Provinces. The National Council of Provinces in the make up thereof is made up of delegates or representatives from provinces to ensure that provincial interests are taken into account in the national legislative process. It does this mainly by participating in the national legislative process and by providing a national forum for public consideration of issues, particularly where it is affecting provinces. You will find that there is some sections in the constitution that make provision for legislation and there is a specific section; Section 76, that is taking into account provincial interests into legislation and that is where the National Council of Provinces actually features. The NCOP also coordinates and integrates and aligns across the spheres of government, because that remains a challenge. In all our engagements we usually have special delegates from the provinces as well as organised local government. Now how do we do it as the NOCP? We usually have debates and recently we introduced a new form of engagement, what we call Ministerial Engagement or Ministerial Responses, to respond to the specific issues where just recently we had an issue around the looting, the crime system and gender based violence and we brought in the Minister of Police and other, the MEC’s from provinces to respond to the safety issue, but what we also use as a platform to make sure that we extend the issue of accountability, of oversight; we then have what we call Central Parliaments or Central Work, where we also create across provinces, districts and localities through public participation and we also use that as a platform for feedback on progress made in implementing development priorities, we track the implementation progress across provinces, districts and localities. For instance, I know that will be the next question but I can use it as an example; when we did the Women’s Charter Review, we actually did it at a district level, we went through almost all the districts in the country to make sure that we engage structures, NGO’s and other stakeholders a well as the general public, particularly women.DR. MALKAYou’ve certainly provided an overview and looking at how it integrates across society, across the three different spheres within the government structures and yes you’re right, I definitely want to ask you about the National Women’s Charter Review Process. I was very intrigued when you said that it went down to a district level and just to explain aspects of the Women’s Charter; we are looking at equality, fighting violence against women and girls as well as progress on implementing articles of the Women’s Charter. Can you talk us through some of the key elements that you are leveraging in this space and how the communication forums have been taking shape?DC LUCASIn 2019 we realised that it’s already 25 years of the Women’s Charter that was actually adopted in 1994, based on about 12 articles, but we realised that in the 25 years, it’s not necessarily that we went back to the Charter to see whether the way government responded, was it in line with what the women of 1994, as they had also reviewed the 1954 Charter, is it actually in line with what their expectations were because that was like a document of demand to say that this is...we are going into a democratic dispensation, are we really taking into account the issues of women and some women, the Federation of South African Women sat together and they decided on 12 articles that they set, more or less, education, culture, violence, infrastructure, media, social services, that is the kind of things that they sat around and they set our minimum demands that we want to be responded to, taking into account women. Possibly the women at that stage had a lot of faith in the fact that the men will be able to actually respond because remember we are from a very patriarchal background and why is that women’s issues had to come almost through the back door.DR. MALKASure and in 1994, if I’m not mistaken, memory serves that before we came in as a fully fledged democratic parliament, there was only 2.7% of parliament were made up of women, so it just shows that we didn’t have a voice in the legislature.DC LUCASSo that’s why I always say to them when we say break the silence, we’re not only speaking about issues of violence, we are speaking of issues of disregard, the fact that women were just like, just an extension of whoever, particularly the male that was in charge and that is the reason why we said let us look into this Women’s Charter and it became a resolution of that Women’s Parliament of 2019, let us see how far we are and we also said let us base it on the following issues, let us do a proper gender analysis at local government level, how the integrated planning and whether it includes gender responsive planning or budgeting, as well as how gender is service provision at the local government level. That was the one area, the other area was then we said let us look at province, you find in provinces they say yes, we’ve got a Women’s Desk or say we’ve got Women’s Office on the status of women, so in terms of their planning processes, because provinces have got provincial growth and development strategies; do they have gender responsive planning, budgeting, how is provincial government responding to issues of gender. We actually had a session where we called provinces to the NCOP to make a thorough analysis of the national gender machinery on all levels, because you find that there are gender focal persons and that is something that we’ve been complaining about, in departments they will appoint as an assistant director and say you will be the gender focal person and that is like malicious compliance, saying that we do have someone that is responsible and then there’s a gender focal person and that person becomes responsible for all special programmes, everything that is not necessarily in the mainstream will be then shifted to the gender focal person, but that person doesn’t have resources, that person doesn’t even have a proper position from where she can actually...he or she can actually be in a position to speak truth to power and that is why we said let us do a proper analysis and we did that analysis, we did a review of the systems, of the institutional arrangements at all levels, so that we can see what is weakening, what we want to achieve, what is exclusionary of these systems and in the process and really we found that in 25 years, we haven’t made a lot of progress. We have all the legislature in place, people are making policies, but it is not necessarily implemented and one major weakness is that budgets across all spheres of government are not necessarily responding to gender issues. For the past two years we were putting pressure on the different departments through our process of making sure that departments are called to respond, we had a law reform seminar where we called the justice department, social development, home affairs and we looked into the specific legislation that are supposed to make sure that we address the issue of gender equality. Gender based violence has been one of the major issues that we started to address, so one of the things that we, in terms of this charter, that we really wanted is to make sure that we develop a charter that is r
