Women'sNet newsletter: 1 June 2012: Traditional Courts Bill

In a district that cannot be named for fear of reprisal the traditional leader unilaterally controls community resources and access to land. In most instances, where there are projects that rural women have initiated without him, for example a sewing machines project, he tries to undermine the projects and threatens to remove the resources needed for the project, e.g. sewing machines. His ‘justification’: he feels like he has no control over the project and the money involved.

At amaHlubi, RWM is working with an elderly woman who is a widow living alone. Her only source of income is the state social grant. She compliments the grant by growing food in her garden. Cattle from neighbouring eMangweni kept destroying her food garden. In trying to support her, we encouraged her to report the matter to the eMangweni traditional court. She approached the eMangweni traditional court, which is about 10 kilometres from her home, but was sent away because the court “does not speak to a woman”. The court demanded that she be represented by a man. As she does not have a man in her home she cannot return to the court and has stopped growing food in her garden. As RWM, we regard this as an example of the feminisation of poverty

I found myself being confronted with the issue of anonymity and accountability in different ways at the AWID Forum.

At the Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) and Connect Your Rights events that took place just before the Forum, we discussed about the different and increasingly sophisticated ways that internet technologies have been used to erode any sense of anonymity online.

From facial recognition software being used by governments to identify people who participate in street demonstrations, to the collection, aggregation and sale of our data and activities by internet platform providers that we rely on so heavily for our online engagement such as Google and Facebook - it seems like the internet is significantly shifting from a distributed space of multiplicity to a consolidated space of multinational private enterprise.

The problem with pictures

At the FTX, WITNESS.org shared their development of a software called ObscuraCam, that can enable android smart phone users to easily obscure faces of the people captured through the phone’s camera. This is quite an innovative solution to ensure that privacy and anonymity is designed into the technology, and that we do not make the assumption that everyone is okay with images of their faces being captured and shared into spaces outside of their control.

The Traditional Courts Bill currently under discussion in South Africa’s parliament and due to be enacted by the end of 2012 could undermine the basic rights of some of the country’s most vulnerable inhabitants: the 12 million women living in remote rural communities across the country.

The bill aims to "provide more South Africans improved access to justice" by recognising traditional authorities and laws. Through it, traditional leaders in remote areas would be given unilateral power to create and enforce customary law.

The bill sparked an outcry in 2008 when it was first tabled in the National Assembly. But with it due to come into effect at the end of 2012, civil rights groups are becoming increasingly vocal in their demand to have it declared unconstitutional.

The bill will allow traditional leaders to hear civil cases including disputes surrounding contract breach, damage to property, theft and crimen injuria or "unlawfully, intentionally and seriously impairing the dignity of another," if such assault does not result in grievous bodily harm.

But many civil rights groups have slammed the proposed bill. According to Jennifer Williams, director of the Women’s Legal Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, the bill would "place all power in the hands of a single individual – in almost all cases a man – and effectively make him judge, jury and implementer."