“It is so easy to admire a person, to admire what he or she stood for or stands for, and yet shrink from cutting off the mission of the present.” This, the first of Chief Albert Luthuli's 10 commandments, provides the moral compass and measure of heat to be withstood in the cause of struggle.
The Speakers Forum, a body of South African speakers from provincial legislatures, the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) and National Assembly, recently gathered in KwaZulu-Natal to assess progress or lack thereof on the thorny subject of gender equality. I had the distinct privilege of being invited to discuss “Collaboration in ensuring a gender-transformation project”.
By way of background, more than two decades ago I had the privilege of discussing matters of gender with ANC stalwart Ruth Mompati. She shared the origins of the party's 50-50 gender strategy. On the eve of 1990, preparations for repatriations from exile were abreast and it was at this moment that women asked what would happen to them when the got home. They addressed this question to OR Tambo, who graciously invited men to a meeting and posed the question. The men, said Mompati, responded: “Why should this question be asked? Well, the women will have to do what women do — tender the family and husbands.” Tambo, Mompati said, retorted: “Comrades, the question the women are asking and the concern they hold is legitimate and the answer thus far given by you, my male comrades, [confirms] the legitimacy of the women’s concern. They have been fighting side by side with us here in combat. What justifies them to go into the kitchen and tender family and husbands? This is totally wrong.” With that, the 50-50 strategy was conceived and born, said Mompati. But has it worked? she asks. No, it has not, to the extent it should, because the wily foxes have adopted a different take. They have deployed the vixen as a front and real gender empowerment has not taken root.
Close to three decades ago a fiery human and women's rights activist advanced the women exiles agenda at legislative level. In 1994 Pregs Govender tabled the Women’s Budget bill to address the millennia-old unattended and neglected needs of women. Subsequent to the 1996 World Conference on Women in Beijing, Govender who co-edited the South African document, insisted on practical ways for the budget to take root. She agitated further: “A national forum for the South African government to reduce its spending on defence, suggesting those funds be redirected towards women.” This seemed to be well received. However, in 2001 Govender was the only MP to register opposition to the arms deal in the country’s Defence Budget Vote. It is easy to admire a person, to admire what he or she stood or stands for, yet shrink from cutting off the mission. When crunch time came, Govender found herself in the Steve Bantu Biko neighbourhood's maxim: “Black man, you are on your own.” Govender was, and we would reminisce.
A subject as complex as gender requires not only confrontation with mission but an arsenal of ammunition so when the johnny-come-lately to the subject, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), makes its entrance, the theoretical foundations and national principles of the subject are well grounded.
A subject as complex as gender requires not only confrontation with mission but an arsenal of ammunition so when the johnny-come-lately to the subject, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), makes its entrance, the theoretical foundations and national principles of the subject are well grounded. This is where my presentation at the recent event made a seminal contribution. Based on the Applied Development Research Solutions (ADRS), three decades of modelling training by the Economic Modelling Academy (EMA), of which I am director, demonstrated the unique features of what legislatures need the most, given their role. By way of a reminder, their role in the main is to exercise oversight on the executive by scrutinising and challenging the work of the government, to make and change laws, to debate the important issues of the day and to check and approve government spending. So to execute their developmental work — which can be defined as “Translate socially desirable goals through a politically compelling and economically feasible agenda legally, and managing consequences by holding the executive to account” — what legislatures most need is to ask the right questions. To equip them to do so, they need a level of competence in understanding the complex system they as legislators oversee. To this end, they need knowledge of various social and economic topics, such as macroeconomics and budget-related issues and policies; the labour market; skills demand; supply; the fourth industrial revolution; poverty, inequality and the role of social protection policies; and global warming and green economy options and implications.
Over 30 years EMA ADRS has drawn its training in the use of heterodox models to address the integrated challenge of poverty and inequality within which gender finds expression in the context of a macro-micro economic framework. The unified system of linked macro-micro and national, provincial, district and municipal models links directly with household impacts. In its advanced form, we are now able to use multidimensional poverty indices as a forward-looking tool in which gender-disaggregated policy impacts can be inferred through this foresight.
It was interesting to see a document released by the IMF on gender budgeting, which was not of any interest to the fund when Govender and others pushed for it three decades ago. There is also no evidence that despite releasing such a document, there is commitment in its advice to countries and evaluations towards gender budgeting. In its recent assessment of South Africa, the IMF encouraged the country to embrace fiscal consolidation, meaning more cuts on social spending. The impacts of such on gender-specific consequences are left unattended. As the IMF document implies: “Because of the theoretical and practical difficulties in determining the effect of fiscal policies and programme on women and men, and the traditionally weak voice of women in political discussions and government bureaucracies, women’s developmental concerns are unlikely to be fully considered in public budgeting. Gender budgeting efforts are intended to commit public budgeting to weighing the benefits and costs of policies that would promote gender equality and girls’ and women’s development, and then, to act in response to this evaluation,” women and girls can take solace in the difficulty being acknowledged. But Govender and others, such as the ADRS and EMA, have long gone beyond describing the challenge, instead implementing practical steps through which this millennia malice against women and the girl child can and should be addressed by rigorous interrogation of the macro-micro effects of policy through an integrated system on causes and exacerbation of negative gender effects. My message to the speakers of our legislature was to equip them to follow these because they matter:
First, scenarios matter because they define a national agenda that addresses a socially desirable goal; second, translating scenarios into policy matters because they generate a compelling and uniting political mobilisation towards achieving this socially desirable goal; third, quantifying scenario matters because the path towards impact is knowable and discoverable ahead of implementation, thus it can be elaborated upon; fourth, thus sound choices can be made and accountability can be exacted; fifth, embedding scenarios as a necessary condition for public policy matters for consistency of foresight; sixth, capacitating state functionaries in the government, private sector, civil society and the public with tools and techniques of scenario design, econometric quantification through tools of foresight and choice design should improve the quality of policy choices and create a unified assurance supervisory system. Only then can we empower the president at key moments of national engagement to talk impact, away from an easy and lazy laundry list of inputs. Only then can legislature hold the executive to account.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.