By: Gcobani Qambela
Women in South Africa’s political landscape have always proved to be resilient forces in what has for a long time been a patriarchal cultural and political landscape concerned with positioning women in the kitchen as submissive ‘servants’ of men with nothing but a home-cooked meal to contribute.
Commemorations such as Women’s Day and the creation of special ministries of women have painted a façade of the post 1994 South African government’s position when it comes to fixing culturally, socially and politically entrenched gender inequalities, and indeed one may be tempted to say that ‘they are doing something’.
Political veteran Patricia de Lille was recently howled down by ‘unruly ANC supporters’ during her address a government Human Rights Day event in Cape Town on the 20th of March 2011. Now, while much of the commentary on the event has been centred around legal arguments on the right to freedom of speech and when it could be justifiably accepted when a person freedom of speech has been violated, very few analysts have really uprooted the permitting undercurrents behind the event.
The truth of the matter is that the incidence is instructive of the perceived role of women in political leadership in South Africa, by both government leaders and so called ‘ordinary’ South Africans. The political consciousness in both public and private South African spaces still paints the political arena as solely a reservoir for men, and men only at that....
Read the full article here: http://feministssa.com/2011/03/28/no-space-for-women-in-sa%e2%80%99s-political-arena/
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