SECUNDA – Kicking off Women’s Month, the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) hosted the 2024 Women Commission (SWC) Lekgotla, from August 1 to 2 in Secunda.
This year’s theme was accelerating socio-economic opportunities for women’s empowerment whilst fighting the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) in the local government.
The lekgotla aimed to take stock of women’s representation in local government, capacitate municipalities on the functions of women’s causes and their relationship with the SWC, draft a plan of action for the Mpumalanga SWC, and report on the implementation of the 2023/24 financial year resolutions.
“It has been 10 years since the hosting of the Mphumalanga SALGA Women Commission Lekgotla in the province. It has also been 30 years of democracy,” said Sibongile Makushe-Mazibuko, Mpumalanga SWC commissioner.
She addressed the critical issues that affect many women:
• The acceleration of economic empowerment for women.
• Women living with disabilities while fighting the scourge of GBVF.
“We need to activate the local economic development programmes to give effect to support women’s initiatives”, said Mazibuko.
The SWC reflects the SALGA mandate to coordinate, promote and advocate for gender-appropriate strategies and practices within member municipalities and feed into national, regional, and global agendas and processes.
The commission’s strategic objective is to increase the representation and participation of women in local government to parity.
Statistics show that 59% of executive mayors, speakers, and chief whips in Mpumalanga are male and 41% are female. The SWC still needs to do more work across the country to balance these numbers.
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The speaker of the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature, Lindi Masina, said: “We are still far from winning the battle of GBVF, which is destroying the fabric of our society.
“As a legislature, we held various awareness campaigns and workshops and convened Women’s Parliaments to draw from experiences of violence perpetrated against women.
“We need to re-educate men, boys and even women, schooled and socialised in the art of patriarchal thinking, which seeks to build an identity on a foundation that sees the will to dominate as an essential way of asserting oneself.”
According to Nokwanda Ndashe, SALGA’s communication and marketing officer for Mpumalanga, the 2021 local government elections saw some reversal in the overall representation of women at the local government level since 2011.
“Women’s representation was 38% in 2011, 41% in 2016 declined by 4% and in 2021 to 37%. While women’s representation remains higher than in the first local government elections in 1995 at 19%, the drop to 37% in 2021, should be a cause for concern”, said Ndashe.
She said in another scary statistic and one that talks to the theme of the lekgotla, is that according to SAPS almost 11 women are murdered every day in South Africa.
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