To
Portfolio Committee on Women, Youth and People with Disabilities
From
Mokgadi
Subject
Comment on the shortlisting process
Date
5 September 2022 11:47 a.m.
Dear Portfolio Committee on Women, Youth and People with Disabilities,
Thank you for the comprehensive reports provided for the shortlisting process of candidates for Commissioner on Gender Equality (CGE). I applaud you for your transparency in this entire process. I have noted with concern some matters of importance which served as indicators for the selection of CGE members as stipulated in the Constitution and the CGE's handbook. The handbook clearly states the mandate of the Commission is to advance, protect, and promote gender equality through research, public education, policy development, legislative initiative, effective monitoring, and litigation. The CGE further states the following regarding shortlisted candidates, That’s
- The candidates should be capable and capacitated individual.
- Have knowledge and experience of cooperative governance which could have been exercised through participating in boards.
- The qualities involving monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in the academic field.
- Report writing skills, policy development and evaluation.
- Possessing skills in diverse social science fields; and
- Ensuring an impact on internal and external stakeholders amongst others.
These above-mentioned standard requirements were also highlighted in the advert for application for membership to the CGE. The Portfolio Committee expressed preferences to include into, candidates without degrees, and those who submitted their applications late considering interruptions caused by various challenges such as load shedding and poor network connectivity, etc.
The committee further articulated the exclusion criteria for applicants, whose aim was to mitigate challenges at CGE, recognising that -
- " The are weird people at the CGE, and the organisation did not need more weird people", who “would only add bad behaviour to the CGE”
- Furthermore, the Chairperson explicated that "some candidates who were professors had been founding wanting, and unable to respond to Members' questions". This statement is extremely compounding and disturbing. It would be meaningful to get some form of clarity and postulation from the chairperson in this matter. It is indeed concerning for me as a professor, that our expertise is being reduced to near nothing, and that we are now being discriminated against for selection to the committee only because we are professors. This statement is undermining and casting wild aspersions about professors in the extreme and warrants a public apology. One thus wonders the outcome of the CGE mandate if its potential intellectual stakeholders are viewed with suspicion and potentially excluded from committee. With this said,
it is my submission that the recruitment process was based on an unjustified perception about professors and should thus be retracted to review the criteria which should be in tandem with the policies and the legislation. The guidelines are explicit and need to be inclusive, not exonerating others to contest based on the previous encounters. It is imperative to follow the procedures and guidelines as gazetted and to adhere to them. It is also my plea that the selection process should be guided by what was entailed in the advert and not changed during other stages of the recruitment process. Commissioners are critical people who should be there to take the agenda of the country forward and the selection and appointment of candidates are supposed to be in line with the prescripts and be according to the book. The advert's emphasis was concomitant with the policy emphasising qualifications, and this requirement must be observed. I assert that a clear validation for a prolific government is key. We must strive for social justice, social compact, sustainable development and be Afrocentric. There can be a litany of aspects which can easily destroy our society, lead to skills flight if these forms of practices associated with corruption can be left to decay the system. It is advisable that as leaders, we need to start rethinking the governance machinery of ensuring that the public service is professionalised. Research, social science skills, were embellished in both the advert and the policy. We should not go two steps backwards while we are almost at the poles with these kinds of debates.