Commission on Gender Equality 2016/17 Annual Performance Plan; NYDA National Youth Policy; Department of Women performance report, with the Minister present

Meeting report

Briefing by Commission on Gender Equality

Ms Thoko Mpumlwana, Deputy Chairperson: Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) mentioned that the organisation’s presentation was quite long, so it would not discuss the mandate and would go straight to the strategic plan.

Ms Marissa van Niekerk, Acting CEO and Head of Department: Legal, CGE, said she would skip the legislative framework, apart from the social development goal (SDG) 5 in the presentation, which had a specific reference to the Commission: to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The targets were as follows:

• To end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.
• Eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls in the public and public sphere, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.
•  Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
• To recognize and value unpaid domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.
• To ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.
• To ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action with the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action, and the outcome documents of their review conferences.
• To undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws.
• To enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology to promote the empowerment of women.
• To adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.

The strategic objectives were:

• To ensure the creation and implementation of an enabling legislative framework that promoted the attainment of gender equality.
• To protect and promote gender equality by engaging with relevant stakeholders to educate and raise awareness on issues of gender, challenge patriarchal perceptions and stereotypes, and take action against infringements of gender rights through the implementation of appropriate redress.
• To monitor state compliance with regional and international conventions, covenants and charters which had been accredited to, or ratified by, the Republic, relating to the object of the Commission for Gender Equality.
• To build an effective, efficient and sustainable institution that would fulfill its constitutional mandate on gender equality.

The Commission was redirecting its public and education department, which was aimed at enhancing the education programme of the CGE, in line with the provision of Section 11(1) (b) of the CGE Act 39 of 1996 as amended, which was to foster public understanding of matters pertaining to the promotion of gender equality. It must also result in skills development of the Commission’s education officers. The CGE would be facilitating a development programme for formalised structures such as the municipalities, workers’ unions, civil society organisations (CSOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in all the provinces on the gender implication of the SDGs, UN Resolution 1325 on Peace and Security, and the National Development Plan (NDP) 2030, to ensure that these were mainstreamed into the local programmes of municipalities and the work undertaken by these institutions. Other reasons for the redirection included using public media platforms to disseminate gender equality education and information.

A significant percentage of South Africans in rural areas faced a challenge that was different, if not harsher, than those in the urban areas, with patriarchy being at the centre of the experiences of women. One of them was the recognition of traditional leaders. In the North West Province, traditional leaders’ wives would like to be recognized as a structure within the Provincial House of Traditional Leaders. The recognition would go a long way in ensuring that they were economically independent and have their own development activities, including exposure. It was alleged that when there were provincial and national events in their provinces, only the husbands were invited.

In terms of widowhood, there was still discrimination against women. This was linked to issues of inheritance, land ownership and mourning. Given the importance of marrying within a royal bloodline, the women had no choice of whom and when they wanted to marry. This also posed a challenge when the wife was unable to get pregnant -- the woman may be encouraged to secretly bear children with the husband’s brother. When there was poor service delivery in the community, women or girl children were the ones who were still expected to fetch water from communal taps.

The Commission had entered into a national memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), and some of their work included outreach in communities in collaboration with municipalities, and workshops with the staff of municipalities on gender mainstreaming.

Ms Van Niekerk highlighted some of the traditional leadership cases that the CGE had been dealing with, and the one she mentioned related specifically to the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA).  The province of Limpopo had received three traditional leadership cases between the financial years of 2014/15 to 2016/17. These matters had been lodged by women who argued that they were being denied traditional leadership positions because of their gender. The CGE recognised the important role that COGTA played in resolving traditional leadership disputes, and as a result, it had engaged the Provincial House of Traditional Leaders in the quest to resolve the matters amicably.  The cases mentioned were the Kutama, the Beatrice Matsepe and the Ivy Maserumule matters.

The CGE believed in creating synergies with likeminded institutions and sought to work hand in hand with traditional leadership in order to eradicate gender discrimination within our communities. The CGE had signed memorandums of association (MoAs) with COGTA in various provinces, such as the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. The House of Traditional Leadership was deemed crucial because it was the moral compass of society, and had a very great influence on public opinion.

Ms Van Niekerk invited the Commissioner for CGE, Dr Wallace Mgoqi, to talk about the “One Woman, One Hectare” campaign.

Dr Mgoqi said that the campaign had been started by the CGE in 2012, having regarded the precarious nature of the relationship between women and land, which had always been via the father or male sibling of the family. The aim of the campaign was to lobby in terms of their mandate under Section 11 of the CGE Act for the government to give consideration to access to ownership of land being given in an equitable manner.

Mr Thuli Putu, Chief Financial Officer, CGE, briefly discussed how the organisation was funded. It was a R70 million a year budget organization, of which 70% went to the cost of employees (COE), as it was a service entity that did research, litigated, solved legal problems, and had lawyers and advocates to promote women’s and gender equality rights. The remaining 30% was on goods and services.

Ms T Mokwele (EFF) interrupted that Members did not have the presentation for the CGE’s budget which the financial officer was discussing.

The Acting Chairperson asked Members to allow the CGE to proceed, and they would look for the presentation handouts. If there were not available, they should be sent to the Committee.

Mr Putu said the Commission had a presence at grassroots in rural communities and in municipalities, and also worked on raising awareness. As far as funding was concerned, the Commission was constrained. It did not have money and was implementing cost containing measures, getting benefits from collaboration and also trying to use technology as a substitute.

Ms Mpumlwana closed by saying that the Commission remained with the challenge of the synergy between the lived realities of people and the understanding of the constitution and the community expression of these realities, and was appealing for support. Examples of these challenges included customary marriages, the legal age to marry and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights -- the harming and lack of tolerance for members of the LGBT community. It was important for the CGE and other departments, as well as stakeholders, to come together and help combat these challenges in order to live in a state that had been imagined when the Constitution was drafted.

Discussion

Ms T Wana (ANC) made a few comments on the presentation itself, saying that if the Commission was intending to give a report on the budget, the report should be available. The size of the format had been very small, although the officials had technical documents with bigger fonts, and this was unfair and discriminatory. The work done by the Commission had been impressive, especially regarding the issue in the Eastern Cape.

Mr D Ximbi (ANC) said that with regard to the amaXhosa, he was aware of the need to empower women, but he was worried about tradition because these practices were passed down from their forefathers. He mentioned that he supported the One Woman One Hectare idea but in terms of a leader, he did not see going against tradition as women’s empowerment.

Mr M Mhlanga (ANC) asked about the CGE’s participation throughout the provinces, and what insights could be reported back to the Committee. The Commission had mentioned that they had offices in all nine provinces -- where were they established in each specific province, because for all they knew, those offices could be non-existent. He suggested that the Commission should consider its financial spending and perhaps adjust. The report had not mentioned the specific methods that the Commission intended to take in order to address inequality, economic emancipation, poverty eradication programmes, so that there could be further debates on whether the department was at work or really needed assistance.  The report had not mentioned the organisations that the GCE was in partnership with, or the NGOs that they worked with to get rid of gender inequality. Was society aware of the services and activities that the CGE gave? The country should not be in a quandary in terms of knowing at what age a girl child could get married. By now the country should know, but it seemed that changing the policy when it came to age would confuse society.

Ms Mokwele asked what training the Commission was providing for the people, and how often did they train them. What was the Commission doing with the challenge of patriarchy, and how best could they address this international monster?  When the CGE mentioned the ‘girl-child’, this was something close to her heart as she had a daughter who was doing her first year at university, and she did not want her to go through the hardships that she had done when she was her age. She asked what it was that the Commission intended to do for the ‘girl-child’ and what were they doing to help her in terms of the natural phenomenon of going through menstrual periods every month -- were there any provisions for sanitary towels? Somehow there needed to be legislation on the provision of sanitary towels across the board to a ‘girl-child’, because the towels provided some sort of dignity.

She asked why Africans allowed a European system of thinking to take over regarding the traditional leadership legislation, as Africans were cultured people and there were things that they could not change because of their cultural ways. These days, South Africans channeled their thinking and way of operations into the Western fashion, where they allowed the Western system to determine their culture and ridicule it. She made reference to the cultural practice of Ukutwala in the Xhosa culture, which was now portrayed in a way that it was a bad thing, but the elders in the community still appreciated it. She asked how the Commission linked governance and culture to understand cultural practices in a positive way. She supported the issue of “one woman, one hectare” but added that one woman should be given ten hectares because this was their land and if that concept could be brought to the EFF, it would be fully supported and the party would assist in ensuring that the hectare was not a piece of barren land.  Her last comment was on the budget expenditure, where she mentioned that it was unacceptable for the Commission to spend such a large amount of money on salaries, regardless of the qualifications, and it should work on enriching everyone and not just themselves, and encourage socialism.

The Acting Chairperson said that the budget was a matter of concern and should be looked into, as it was unacceptable to have 70% of the annual budget spent on salaries. It sounded unethical, for that matter. He welcomed the Minister of Women in the Presidency, Ms Susan Shabangu, who had just arrived. He mentioned the importance of quality of presentations given, and the errors created a suspicion that the Commission had done a ‘cut and paste’ of previous presentations, and taking the Committee for granted for thinking that they might not notice the typos made.

He asked the Commission to address the issue of the elimination of female genital mutilation. He asked if the practice was carried out in South Africa and if it was practiced, where exactly it was practiced. What programmes had been put in place to fight it, and what do the CGE think Parliament could do to help to end the practice? What programmes had the Commission put in place to end child marriage? About a month ago, there had been protests in Gauteng at the Pretoria Girls High School, where girl children had been protesting against the discrimination in respect of their hair, and the Commission had never appeared or made a statement on a topic that counted as its area of expertise. Where was the CGE during the protests, and what had they done to ensure that it did not happen again in the country?

Ms Mpumlwana started off by apologizing for the presentation slides, and said that they would send a revised presentation with the corrections. As a Chapter 9 institution, the basis for their work was nothing but the Constitution, which had been drafted by South Africans, and they had been appointed to help deal with issues of gender inequality. In addressing the question of who the Commission represented, she said that their job was to ensure gender equality, but they were also mindful of the fact that the majority of Africans who had been historically disadvantaged by patriarchy, colonialism, misinterpretation of culture and application of religion, had been women.

The Acting Chairperson interrupted to advise Ms Mpumlwana to address the relevant questions and not generalize in her response, as there was not enough time.

The age of marriage as proposed in the current bill was 16 years, as there had been a bill that allowed for a child to marry earlier than the age of 16, and the Law Reform Commission had proposed 16 years as the basic age. The CGE was not sure whether the age would be approved, but it was intended to ensure that there were no child marriages. On the question of giving priority to Western ideologies over African culture, this was not what the Commission sought to do, but it was promoting what was in the Constitution. The information on female genital mutilation being carried out in South Africa was true, and there had been two cases where people had complained about it. The CGE intended to find out exactly where it was practiced in South Africa.

Dr Mgoqi said that the programme of “one woman, one hectare” of land had already begun to be implemented by the Department, and it had allocated a budget of R100 million.

The Chairperson had to cut off the replies from the CGE in the interests of time, because there were still two more presentations to be done. If further questions needed clarification, the Committee Secretary would send them.

Department of Women in the Presidency: Annual Performance

Minister Shabangu apologised for being late and highlighted that one of the biggest challenges the Department of Women in the Presidency (DWP) faced was its restructuring, as it previously had three responsibilities and therefore had had to reduce theses responsibilities in 2014. The Department was unfortunately under-funded. Its core mandate was to deal with issues of empowerment of women, so the DWP had been divided into two. One was responsible for the socioeconomic empowerment of women sector, and the second took care of stakeholder research, policy coordination, knowledge management, monitoring and evaluation. 

In the section that dealt with social and economic empowerment, there had been a report produced under the leadership of the President which had reported on the status of women in the economy. The President had subsequently given a mandate that the economy cluster departments must be able to come back and report on what they had done to meet the needs of women. The overall report was that the Department had been restructured, and this year they had gone to the Treasury with a proposal for giving the Department sufficient funding. They were still negotiating with the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) to get more capacity for the DWP, because today they lacked the capacity and had become the poorest child in the government. They were working on changing it.

Ms Jenny Schreiner, Director General: DWP, said the 2015/16 period had been a time when the Department had been trying to put systems in place. Critical restructuring had taken place and they were in a significantly better place. There had been delivery challenges that the DWP was still addressing and making sure that as they moved forward, the work that should have been dealt with earlier was being addressed. Out of the 34 targets that the Department had in the first quarter, they had managed to achieve 16 and not fully achieved the other 18. They would build on the remaining targets throughout the course of the year.

There had been progress made in terms of their internal audit capacity, with an improvement in reporting and planning processes. As the end at the first quarter, the vacancy rate had been 6.3%, as opposed to the 10 % target, and it was an issue that the department was in the process of addressing. It had established an human resources (HR) committee that would look specifically at these issues. There had been a more comprehensive risk assessment process put in place. The Department was also looking into the issue of unpaid community and house work, which was an issue that had been identified as a key element of women’s economic activity that had not been adequately recognised. The DWP had identified women’s financial inclusion as a critical area. This included looking at job creation and social grants, entrepreneurial development and finance, and the DWP had been looking into the different elements of what existed, what worked and what needed to be strengthened.

She referred the Members of the Committee to the budget presentation slides and highlighted the key points on the spending funding and the budget allocated to the Department. She asked if she could stop and then engage with the members further.

Discussion

Ms Wana said it was a ‘silent’ presentation, compared to what she was expecting.  There had been no clear programme on women living with disabilities, and on the budget as well. The report itself did not give a clear picture of redress.  She asked for clarity on the over-spending due to the co-hosting of the AU Summit.

Ms Mokwele addressed the Minister and the DG on what they were doing for the ‘girl-child’, apart from the outreach programmes. What was it that the Department was doing to track the ‘girl-child’ and keep track of the performance and knowledge that they had embedded? She asked what it was that the socioeconomic empowerment cluster of the department was doing to link wit the small business sector. She was concerned about the outreach programmes, and was not sure if they deliberately excluded other prominent and important stakeholders among rural women who were not allied to any political party, because in most instances their outreach programmes were in some way classified as ANC Women’s League programmes.

Ms Wana interjected and shouted “hayisuphosia,” which was translated as “No, do not lie.”

Mr Mhlanga asked what they have achieved when they talked about having achieved 16 out of 35 targets. He asked if the Select Committee, as well as Parliamentary membership, were succeeding in terms of their gender politics and the balancing of genders. Was the ‘girl-child’ programme institutionalised, how often did the programme take place, and was there enough funding to roll it out continuously? He said it would be important to learn how the DWP related with the provincial legislatures.

Mr M Chetty (DA) asked why meetings with other departments, where discussions of gender mainstreaming could be addressed, were not taking place

The Acting Chairperson said that as much as the DWP had said that they were under-funded and poor, it appeared that they were under-spending and not spending the little that they had. How would they then convince the Committee to argue that they should be given sufficient resources when they were not even able to spend the allocated budget? He asked for a brief response.

The Minister said the responsibility of the Department was to oversee whether government was delivering when it came to women, and the challenge for them had been how to execute that mandate, which was through the restructuring that they had done. At the establishment of the DWP, they had been informed that they were not a legislative department, and they were also not a service delivery department in the sense that they would take water and food to society.

There was no specific programme for women living with disabilities, because part of what had happened was that responsibility for women with disabilities had gone back to the Department of Social Development, and the programmes for them existed within that Department, and not the DWP. Its job was to monitor the Social Development Department to see if they were serving the interests of women with disabilities.

The DWP had not been working with corporate companies, but they planned on working with them because they created more jobs and were the generators of the economy. They would come back with a report on the corporate sector, because there was little female representation in the sector and that was where change would come from.

The AU Summit question was addressed by explaining that the over-spending had not been budgeted for -- it had been an unexpected responsibility, and as a host one could not say that one would not spend when one had a visitor.  

The Department had various programmes for the ‘girl-child’, and they did reach out to rural communities, but were unable to reach out to rural communities in a large capacity. They partnered with the private sector where possible and selected one on two children in poor communities where they intended to empower the ‘girl-child’ through job shadowing, because lack of experience was a major problem in the country. The children got placed in companies to go and view what the company did. The programme started in grade 9, and went through to university.

The Minister said that this year, for the 16 Days of Activism, they planned to roll out dialogues starting in Limpopo to engage with the private sector, to address the violence against women problem.

The Acting Chairperson asked the Minister to hand over to the Director General, and allocated her three minutes to address questions on finance.

Ms Schreiner referred the Members to the presentation slides and asked them to go through the pillars to get a clear sense of what had been done. The issue of gender equality within the Department was in a good position. They also had male leaders, showing that it had a well-balanced gender representation. She said if there were other questions that needed to be addressed, they could do so in writing. 

National Youth Development Agency (NYDA)

Dr Kathutshelo Ramukumba, Chief Executive Officer, NYDA, said that because of the time constraints, it might be necessary to find time to engage further with the Committee because of the importance of youth development in the face of the conditions in which young people were finding themselves, such as poverty, unemployment and inequality, and universities currently shutting down because of youth struggles.

The NYDA had come into existence through the merger of two institutions. These were the Youth Commission, which had originally been given the mandate of lobbying as well as advocating for youth development, and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, which had been given the responsibility of making sure that young people were incorporated into the mainstream economic world which, at the time, was attempted to be achieved mainly through skills development and youth enterprise financing and support. The agency had been formed to provide a more integrated approach to youth development in the country, with the two mandates condensed into one.

The Agency had been tasked with the responsibility of overseeing the total youth development of the country. It was understood that as a single entity, the agency could never correctly be in a position to implement total youth development in the country and even though the Agency was expected to implement certain programmes directly, it was also expected to mainstream youth issues into all sectors of society and to facilitate youth development across all sectors of society. The work that had been done by the Agency to try to respond to all facets of youth development would have initially been programmes in sports, arts and culture, health and wellbeing, education and skills development, but the NYDA had realised about three years ago that they were not achieving an impact, especially given the limited budget that they had. So they had had to refocus on that which they intended to implement directly and those that they would try facilitate and mainstream for others to be able to take forward in the advancement of youth development in the country.

The Agency had then streamlined and redefined their area of focus as skills development, and primarily education at secondary level and enterprise support. It had sought to understand what the main challenges faced by young people were and had realised that the main ones were not divorced from the challenges faced by society in the country generally, which were unemployment and poverty. The NYDA had then sought to understand the causes of the issues. The findings of the research had been issues of education, where young people were either under-educated, irrelevantly educated or uneducated, and so the Agency considered skills development as paramount.

The Agency understood that as South Africa was a developing country, and in order to deal with the question of unemployment and poverty, the question of advancement and assistance for small businesses should be addressed because in developing countries, small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) were the biggest employment generators. In order to address the question of economic growth, therefore, there needed to be advancement as well as support for more entrepreneurial activity in the country, and for young people to be in the mainstream of the economy of the country. Having young people in the mainstream economy would assist in addressing the question of changing the patterns of ownership of the economy, and to equally advance the main issue of translating political freedom into economic freedom for the majority of young people.

When the administration of the Agency was taken over, one of the priority plans had been to develop and implement a turnaround strategy for the organization, designed to reposition it and to address government issues so that they could gain the trust and credibility from young people in the first instance, as their main stake holder, and also from the private sector, which had a bigger role to play in the investment in youth development.

The Agency was proud, without being satisfied, that for the last two financial years the Agency had been able to achieve a clean audit from the Auditor General. It had been able to achieve record achievements in terms of its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including 100% of all the KPIs that had to do with youth development. All commitments made about taking young people to university and skilling the youth had been met, given the limited resources that they had. It was accepted that these achievements were only a drop in the ocean, since South Africa was a youthful nation and the majority of the population was the youth. That was why the Agency was engaging with the National Treasury through the Presidency, to get more resources. The private sector needed to invest in young people because they were the consumers of tomorrow for their businesses, but also as a way of being good corporate citizens.

The Agency delivered youth development in provinces through what they called a full service branch, which was where every product and service that the agency offered could be found, be it skills development, grant funding, or career guidance. The service branches were offices located mainly in towns and cities, and were an inheritance that the agency had received from the former Umsobomvu Youth Fund.

The Agency planned to partner with municipalities in order to try and take youth development to rural areas by establishing local youth offices. An advisory service sector would be implemented in partnership with the local municipality. The Agency was also devising other means to engage young people in rural areas, and was using technology to try and reach young people. This month they would be launching, together with the Office of the President, three key initiatives to take youth development to young people. The first initiative was the NYDA mobile application. This would be cellphone and web-based, where young people would be able to apply for assistance from the Agency wherever they were. The second was to turn all NYDA offices across the country into wi-fi hotspots. They currently had about ten computers in each of the offices where young people could search the net, access opportunities and be able to address the issues that required technology to advance them. Once the hotspots had been established, young people would not have to wait for one another to finish using the computer, but could also access the internet using their own cellphones. Thirdly, there was the launch of the mobile outreach vehicle, which would be featured with the computer network internet services which would be rolled out in all provinces to be used in outreach programs, where young people could apply for interests using the equipment fitted in the vehicles. These were also intended to be made into wi-fi hotspots, to advance the use of technology.

The key focus imposed on the Agency by the legislature was that it had to be biased towards the rural youth. Some of the work done in the rural space had been to intervene through cooperatives, even though they still assisted independent companies. The NYDA provided grants, where individual companies were limited to R200 000. The idea behind it was to stimulate economic activity and to try and give young people an interest in attempting entrepreneurship as an alternative to employment because in their view, it could not be correct that 22 years down the line into a democratic South Africa, a black child still went to school to get a degree and get a better job. They planned to change the mindset and encourage young people to think of entrepreneurship as an alternative, so that the economy could grow.

The Agency had engaged with the Small Enterprise Finance Agency and Industrial Development Cooperation, to enter into a partnership where they had set aside R2.7 billion for five years, strictly for youth-owned enterprises. They had successfully negotiated with the two entities that collateral and stewardship should not be a requirement, as long as the business idea was viable. Secondly, the Agency will be able to provide the finance at a certain percentage across the board and will give the same businesses at least 12 months to repay and to also break even so that the businesses could sustain. 

The Agency believed they were under-funded, given the magnitude of the youth development backlog that needed to be dealt with. The budget that they received from the National Treasury was about R410 million. They have gone out of their way to try and reprioritise the budget through a restructuring programme, where they achieved a saving of R45 million. They would be moving to a smaller building and saving a further R12 million a year which they planed to redirect to youth development. The Agency was operating in a tight space, and cost consciousness was important.

The CEO asked if the Agency could meet with the Select Committee again to go into depth with the annual performance plan, as well as deal with many issues where the Select Committee could assist by interfacing with other government departments, specifically in the area of tribal councils, where a lot more could be achieved if relationships could be established and engaged through Imbizos.

Discussion

Ms Mokwele commented that the presentation had been given by a young person who had been trying to be diplomatic. The Committee would be doing an injustice to the presentation if they went on to engage with it now, given the limited time. She suggested that there should be a day for the Committee to meet with the NYDA, as there were a lot of things they needed to discuss, especially with the work they did for young people. She said that when one looked at the Agency’s appointment of staff in all the provinces, one found that there was no mention of people living with disabilities in their team.

The Chairperson interrupted and reminded Ms T Mokwele (EFF) of the time, and noted the suggestion to meet with the NYDA at another time for further discussion.

Mr J Mthethwa (ANC) said he seconded the suggestion.

Mr Mhlanga said he supported the motion, but wanted to give them homework, and he was trying to engage with the NYDA to give them their homework.

After several interjections by Members, it was agreed to defer further discussion to a future meeting.

The meeting was adjourned.