WIPHOLD National Summit

This past Saturday I attended the National Summit of Women hosted by SAWID at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg. The aim to "provide a platform for inter-generational dialogue from a woman's point of view".

It was made clear to the women attending the workshop that there would be no talk of the state of the South African politics and that none of them were to wear t-shirts representing any political party. This was a pity because I would have loved to hear what the diverse multitude of "imbokotos" had to say about the elections.

At the opening plenary, Gloria Sehuoe, the CEO of WIPTRA (a division of WIPHOLD) said: "WIPHOLD is a personality and that nothing must happen in this country concerning women without WIPHOLD having a view of it". Contradictory I thought, because the women would not be given a chance to speak about what their expectations are for the coming elections. They were given a platform but it had limitations. (why are we limiting the voice of our women? surely they had a lot to say)

The panel consisted of an impressive train of old, beautiful and powerful black women with quite impressive CVs. The list included Prof. Xaba Mokoena, who during her studies in the UK obtained the highest mark in nursing in the whole country; Mrs Sophie Tema - one of the first black journalists in the country and during the 1976 student protest Hector Peterson died in her car; and Dr Ellen Blekkie who is a retired doctors. Panelists were also to head the different discussions and they included the following: health, water & Sanitation, Education, moral values, rural development, safety and security, economic empowerment, housing and land reform and the media.

As usual, I attended the media discussion. However, I was only in the session for 30 minutes because it just did not meet my expectations. I saw this as a good opporturnity to go and attend the moral values commission as I had been curious of what angles would be taken under this discussions.

Moral values were discussed under these eight topics:

- parenting

- informal education

- rights and responsibilities

- peer pressure and peer education

- school environment

- role of the church

- role of the government

- role of the media

The women in this discussion were concerned about the issue of man having multiple relationships - polygamy. They said there should be a bill that prohibits men from having practicising polygammy. They expressed that it is wrong for a man to decide he wants another wife after he had gone and slept around.

It was also interesting to hear that the women feel that having to wear headwraps after your husband dies was discriminatory because the man do not have to do the same when their wives die. This, according to the women should be a choice made by women themselves and should not be enforced on them. As a result, women said that support groups for widows should be established. (There is a huge possibility that the next president will be a poligamist ladies!)

Under the role of government, I was really dissapointed that the first thing spoken about was the need to challenge the issue of punishing children. They said the abolishment of corporal punishment and always talking about 'children's rights' by government has resulted in children lacking respect for their elders. Therefore, they want corporal punishment to be brought back. (Where is the morality in that?)

It disgusts me that our own mothers would want such a vicious thing brought back to torment children. I don't think these women realised that their complaint simply meant that children should not have any protection from the law at all. Already, with the law to protect children existing, a huge number of children are dying from their human rights being violated. What more if there was no laws made specifically to protect them.

Other things that women in this session wanted were:

- enforcement of sunday school on children

- enforcement of girl guides and scouts in schools

- enforce of 50/50 representation in government

- better consultation forums for women needed

- media should have more moral values programs that play during prime time

At the report back plenary, a woman giving a report back from the safety and security discussion spoke about corruption and also said that if women were wise, they would not support JZ. The woman was verbally attacked by a majority of women sitted in hall and I if it was possible, I think some were even prepared to attack her physically. I really do not understand why people were so emotional.

Mrs Witbooi, from the Domestic Workers Union said during the report presentation that WIPHOLD should be held accountable for everything discussed at the summit. She said it was everyone's responsibility to challenge WIPHOLD and ensure that what was spoken about at the conference was voiced out to the relavant people. Although she might have sounded a bit harsh, I felt what she said was important because as women we are invited so such "platforms" and talk about issues of our concern but never really know what happens after that.

The conference to me seemed a bit like a last minute preparation. The panelists gave it away because they all kept saying that they did not have a lot of time for preparations because they were given short notice. I was also turned off by the no talk of elections because at the end of the day, all issues discussed are related to government conduct.