Ghantzi COE Institutional Profile

The Ghanzi Distict is populated by 33.000 people, and measures about 110.000 Km ² of which the majority is covered by the Kalahari Game Reserve, the largest game reserve in the country. The Ghanzi area is further characterized by commercial farming, and has a large variety of ethnic groups, amongst which are the San and Seherero.
The work on the COE process with Ghanzi DC dates back to 2009, when the Ghanzi’s District Chairperson Mr. Director Tlharese was involved in the ToT in Johannesburg and contributed to the development of the current COE manual. He has been a facilitator at several other local government workshops, developing gender action plans with other councils and teaching about gender and stereotypes.

The council reported that 7 out of 24 councillors are women; this is a 30% representation, which, for Botswanan standards, is not bad. The chairperson is male, while the Deputy is female. Out of the 10 committees, 3 are chaired by women, amongst which are the education and the audit committee. There is no specific budget for gender as the council still needs to vote for this. The council has been engaged in the COE process since 2009, and it has contributed and participated in the national and regional summits. The gender focal persons were trained during the training of trainers in 2012.

The council participated and contributed to all previous summits, but reported this year that they have no current project to bring to the 2013 summit. Progress of adoption and implementation of the gender action plan, developed with GL in 2009, is slow. The plan has been circulated to management but still to be approved. This is planned for 11-13 March 2013. During the verification visit, it was explained that previous efforts to get GFPs together or implement activities have not been fruitful, so there was not much progress made. The GFP explained she has now requested a gender focal person from each department to form a Gender task team, and they plan to start meeting in 2013.