No Woman, No Revolution, Part 10b
President Zuma, Speech to the PWM, 2012
This document is included as
a further assistance in examining the questions as previously put:
“Is the Progressive Women’s Movement (PWM) supposed to be
a subsidiary of the ANC Women’s League, and therefore a junior partner of the
ANC? Or is the PWM a wider movement, open to all women, of which the ANCWL is
only one part among many? To what extent have the problems and tensions of the
FEDSAW period in the 1950s been solved? Or, have those problems not been
solved?”
In the attached and linked
speech to the PWM the President certainly does not directly address these
questions. It is even quite hard to see, during many passages of the speech,
where they refer to women and women’s organisation, at all.
Among many other things, the
President said the following:
“To further
promote the legislative environment, we are to fast-track the Gender Equality
Bill. This progressive Bill will promote the prohibition and elimination of
discriminatory religious practises, and eliminate discrimination in access to
socio-economic rights.
“It will seek
to prohibit harmful traditional practises. It will help eliminate and prohibit
discrimination in employment and other opportunities for women.
“The
provisions of the Bill also already talk to the need for the participation of
women in the economy and also full economic emancipation for women.
“The
legislation alone will not achieve our goals. This means that all of us, men
and women, must actively work to promote women’s rights as human rights.
“It means
that the Progressive Women’s Movement must work with relevant government
departments on an on-going basis to promote development and women’s
emancipation.
“What is
important is that all these new or amended laws and protocols indicate that the
commitment exists and that we are moving forward with the promotion of gender
equality. Some progress has been made already in many areas.”
Read and discuss the
document, comrades.
Apart from the above, President
Zuma also, in the same period of time in 2012, made a speech in memory of
Charlotte Maxeke, which is on the ANC web site,
and another on the occasion of the 56th Anniversary of the 1956,
Women’s March to the Union Buildings, which is also National Women’s Day. The
latter speech is attached and linked below.
These are the last documents
in our course, “No Woman, No Revolution”.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Speech to the
Progressive Women's Movement, President Jacob Zuma, 2012; Speech on National Women’s Day 2012.
