Lobatse COE Institutional Profile

Lobatse has a gender action plan awaiting adoption. The councils is also using the draft gender policy from the Women’s Affairs Department. As the large file of evidence shows, Lobatse has mainstreamed gender into their budget, with specific budget lines for gender activities. The gender action plan and activities enjoy the support of the council’s political leadership, the Mayor Mrs Caroline Lesang, Deputy Mayor Mrs Malebogo Kruger, and councillor Mrs Zubeida Rafael, who is also chair of the BALA Women’s Commission. Furthermore, the council has a very active and passionate gender focal person, who has been able to mobilise support and funds for gender mainstreaming activities and document all processes and evidence.

The Lobatse Town Council has participated in all National and Regional Gender Justice & Local Government Summits, with projects in the Local Economic Development, Insitutional and Climate Change and Sustainable Development category. The Gender Focal Person has brought together a drama group where council staff acts out plays that address issues of gender and gender based violence as a tool to raise awareness and stimulate dialogue. During the verification visit the drama group performed one of their plays which made a deep impact due to the intense portrayal of situations of abuse.

During 16 Days of Activism the council had organised a series of activities, please see the enclosed file for further information. Lobatse Town Council has a gender programme

supervisor, a gender focal person and the LTC Gender Committee and the District Committee. M&E meetings are conducted monthly and the district meetings on a quarterly basis. Lobatse is certainly one of the best performing councils when it comes to gender mainstreaming and documentation of processes. This is thanks to the previously mentioned staff which is committed to the cause. An example of this is that the GFP managed to get recognition for her work on gender in her performance agreement, as she is spending a lot of time on it. This is in contrast to most of the other councils where gender mainstreaming is something they do on top of their existing workload and do not get rewarded for this.