Hon Deputy Speaker, hon members in the House and invited guests, I would like to use this opportunity to add my voice and congratulate us women for hosting a successful Fifa World Cup.
As I prepared for this speech, I was thinking about two young deaf ladies who have just landed from Venezuela yesterday afternoon - an eight-year-old young girl and a young female leader. This girl-child had a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to attend the World Federation of the Deaf children's Camp 2010. These two women were the only deaf people from Africa to attend this camp. For this young girl it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience meeting other deaf children from around different parts of the world.
I look forward towards home and I think of millions of other young girls and young female adults who will never experience these kinds of opportunities. We, as Members of Parliament, are in a special position to use our contacts and our opportunity of meeting people in extraordinary positions to be able to give these kinds of opportunities for many other young women.
We can use our skills, our knowledge of Parliament and our constituency work to share our experiences so that other women can benefit and grow. We, as Members of Parliament, can also work in our constituencies with other role-players in civil societies - for example, the different NGOs - to bring on the development of women and young girls.
We have just celebrated August the 9th, our Women's Day commemoration throughout the country - a day in remembrance of women who have fought, marched and were imprisoned for the freedoms of all our women. And we also use this day to reflect on how today we can best advance the goals of working together for equal opportunities and progress for all women.
This year also marks the beginning of the decade of the African women, from 2010 to 2020, which has been adopted by the African Union, AU. Today, we continue to march forward with the theme: Working together for equal opportunities and progress for all women.
Women cannot be free, unless we are free of all discrimination against women. Women cannot be free, unless both men and women work together towards the emancipation of all women. The ANC's 51st National Conference reaffirms the important matter of focusing on the challenges of the eradication of gender oppression and discrimination. It directed us to design a comprehensive strategy on our programme to build a nonsexist society and provide for the integration of gender in all aspects of policies and programmes.
The ANC's commitment to eliminate racism, oppression and exploitation from our society cannot fail to address the question of the emancipation of women. The experience of other societies has shown that the emancipation of women is not a by-product of a struggle for democracy or national liberalisation or socialism. It has to be addressed in its own right within our organisation, the mass democratic movement and the society as a whole.
The majority of women who are black are the most oppressed section of our people, suffering under the yoke of oppression. The liberalisation of women is central to our people's struggle for freedom. The ANC Women's League and alliance partners proposed the formation of a Progressive Women's Movement, PWM, where the key objective was to promote the transformation of the South African society into a truly nonracial and nonsexist society.
The PWM was launched in 2006, and the then Minister of Foreign Affairs in one of her speeches said:
PWM is a movement that is representative of progressive forces in our country; a movement that will stamp the issues that face women daily onto the agenda of every sphere of society in our country.
The aim of the PWM is clearly stated in its founding documents. It states:
We, as South African women, declare our aim of striving for the removal of laws, regulations, conventions and customs that discriminate against us as women and deprive us in any way of our inherent right to the advantages, responsibilities and opportunities that society offers to any one section of the population.
And, ja [yes], I'm quoting from the Women's Charter adopted in 1954. The PWM has six main objectives, but I only have time to highlight one, which I feel is linked to the theme: Working together for equal opportunities for all women. This objective is: To deepen democracy, so as to ensure we fight patriarchy.
Some of the institutions that we have seen and have been able to exist still maintain the culture, values and norms of a patriarchal society. The movement must enable us to fight these atrocities and demons of a patriarchal society in the family, church, government institutions and in the judiciary through all forms of struggle.
To be able to work on this one objective, we need to contribute to the extension of the larger movement for a global justice with women within and outside of the PWM, younger women, mainstream NGOs, national or social movements, the state, multinational institutions and international structures that are committed to women's issues.
The ANC has led efforts aimed at eradicating oppressive gender relations by entrenching the constitutional guarantees of the equality of women; abolishing legislation and policies that discriminate against women; establishing national gender machinery in government; and introducing policies and programmes targeting women and aimed at empowerment and poverty alleviation.
The nongovernmental sector has a role to play in the process of deepening democracy and people-centred development. Democratic forces need to continue to interact with the sector in joint programmes against poverty for social development and assist in strengthening its capacity.
On Women's Day our hon President said: "Everyone has a role to play to ensure that we reach our targets for the benefit of our country." So, hon members, let us continue to work for equal opportunities and the progress for all women in our society. I thank you. [Applause.]