Every August during so-called Women's Month, aside from being inundated with discounts for manicures, women are subjected to empty platitudes about how we're beautiful and should be protected, and how good we have it under the South African constitution.
On the face of it, people are right about the constitution bit. The crafters of that document spent a lot of time and energy ensuring that it shaped equality and diversity in South African society. That's wonderful. Except for the fact that our legislators and the people whose job it is to ensure that that actually happens take an incredibly dim view of women.
Case in point: Deputy Education Minister Mduduzi Manana goes out drinking one night, gets embroiled in an argument with a woman, and rather than just walking away, assaults her, steps on her and goes home.
You'll notice I didn't use the word allegedly in that sentence, as would be the norm for a case in which the perpetrator is yet to be sentenced. That's because he admitted the assault and apologised in a statement.Police Minister Fikile Mbalula, who just a few months ago was all guts and glory in warning abusers that he was coming after them, seemed OK with the fact that it took police several days to effect an alleged arrest.
I use "alleged" in that sentence because going to visit Manana, telling him he needs to hand himself over and kindly smuggling him through the back door of the court does not really an arrest make.
Manana remains in his post. Mbalula says it is up to President Jacob Zuma to suspend him - a president whose women's rights report card isn't exactly filled with As.
Parliament is full of examples of disdain for women. The DA's Archie Figlan kept his job even after being found guilty by his party of sexually harassing a colleague.
ANC MP Mervyn Dirks called the DA's Phumzile van Damme a "straatmeid" during a debate earlier this year. And while Van Damme says she never heard the insult, nobody in her party stood on a point of order and the chair appeared to have heard nothing.It's not the first time the term "straatmeid", which is a term akin to "prostitute", has made its way into the political lexicon. EFF leader Julius Malema used it in 2014 to refer to Small Business Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu.
Actual sex workers came to parliament to lament the fact that they are being murdered in numbers and that police are abusing them. They were treated to a lecture from ANC MPs in the multiparty women's caucus about their own trials and tribulations at work, which include walking on cobblestones in heels and the airconditioning being too cold.
Cheryllyn Dudley of the African Christian Democratic Party has a private member's bill on the table aimed at rewriting the laws on abortion.
On the face of it, the bill appears to want to give the pregnant woman the ability "to make a fully informed choice regarding the termination of her pregnancy". But we know the ACDP voted against the constitution because it allowed for legal abortion.
Dudley wants to rewrite the law to include mandatory counselling before a woman is given an abortion, which will include pictures, ultrasounds and a laundry list of what can go wrong. Scare tactics.
She also wants to limit the existing legislation that allows women late-pregnancy abortions up to 20 weeks.
The ACDP is a party that takes such a dim view of women that it believes women can't be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies.
As leader of the ANC Women's League, Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini should be in touch with the struggles of South African women.A 2015 report into the status of women in the South African economy found that they "remain more likely to be poor than males. Additionally, poor females tend to live further below the poverty line than their male counterparts."
And yet Dlamini saw fit to gamble with the only thing standing between many of these women and utter devastation: the social grant.
The reality is this: unless South African legislators decide to work in the interests of all women - including members of the LGBTI community, sex workers, the poor and those who may not fit into society's moral values and conventions of how a woman should behave - they're working against us all. People often ask me why I am so angry about these issues. My response is always: "Why aren't you?"
• Capazorio is a parliamentary reporter..