South Africa: Building capacity for 2016 local elections

Achieving gender equality requires women’s active participation and involvement in decision-making at all levels, starting at home and extending to the highest levels of government. Several studies have gone beyond numbers to show that women bring different approaches and perspectives to decision-making. While women may not all be the same, they have certain shared experiences that have traditionally been left out of public policy and decision-making.

Elections are one opportunity to increase women’s representation, raise issues of gender inequality and women’s human rights, and to press for greater government accountability on gender sensitivity. Despite the fact that most countries had not come close to reaching the initial 1997 SADC Declaration on Gender and Development target of 30% representation of women in decision-making, governments upped this target to 50% in the more binding 2008 SADC Gender and Development Protocol (SGP).

Following the 2014 National elections in South Africa women’s representation has taken a step back in leadership as seen in the table below:

Gender Links (GL), South African Women in Dialogue (SAWID) and South African Local Government Association (SALGA) partnered through the month of September and October to have nine provincial workshops on capacitating women in politics by providing an accredited course in various areas of politics. The objectives of the workshops were to:

• Enhance the capacity of women leaders to engage strategically with the media.
• Engage with the special measures in place, identify gaps and develop strategies to increase women’s representation in political decision-making through special measures.
• Gauge the extent to which the SADC Protocol targets of 50% by 2015 are being honoured.
• Conduct a gender audit of the elections.
• Popularise the SADC Gender Protocol and have a discussion on the proposed post-2015 indicators and targets.
• Validate the country Barometer findings.

SALGA as the organising body of the workshops invited women from various political parties to be part of the training in the build up to their national women’s Lekgotla in November 2014.