Missing the mark?

When the men who lead the 14 member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) signed a Declaration on Gender and Development in 1997, the day of reckoning seemed far off. Among the several commitments made, they promised to ensure at least 30 percent women in all areas of decision-making by 2005. Little did they reckon on a stock taking by civil society organisations around the region at their 2005 Summit.

 

Indeed, even as the Heads of State bowed to pressure at the summit to raise the thirty percent target for women in decision-making to 50 percent in line with the AU position, they appointed two men to the top positions in SADC. And they put on hold a call to elevate the Declaration to a Protocol largely because the latter would bind them to the commitments they made.

 

Since 1997, representation of women in Southern African parliaments has increased by 1.3 percent, from 17.9 percent to the current level of 19.2 percent. This is second only to the Scandinavian countries where the average is 38 percent. And where it took the Scandinavians 60 years to achieve this, SADC has shown that rapid change is possible.

But hiding beneath the average figures is the disturbing reality that only two SADC countries, Mozambique (36 percent) and South Africa (32 percent) have made the thirty percent mark. Tanzania, scheduled to hold elections in October, is likely to make the grade because activists used the 2005 deadline to pressure the government into increasing a constitutional quota of 20 percent to 30 percent.

 

Two trends that resonate with international experience are apparent. First, women clearly perform better in countries with the Proportional Representation (PR) electoral systems (in this case, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia). Second, in order to achieve significant change, this system has to be combined with quotas.

The high proportion of women in local government in Namibia (42 percent; the highest of any area of decision-making in SADC) is explained by the combination of a PR system and legislated quota. Conversely, the fact that representation in the national assembly following the 2004 elections in Namibia sits at 25 percent is accounted for by the lack of either a voluntary or legislated quota at this level.

Tanzania, the only country among the “achievers” that has a First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system owes its success to a constitutional quota that distributes seats in the house reserved for women on a PR basis, after constituency based elections.

 

The lessons for the rest of the region, where levels of women’s representation wallow at 15 percent and below, are clear. To achieve the 30 percent target, they would either have had to change their electoral system and combine this with voluntary or legislated party quotas; or they would have had to reserve seats in a FPTP system along the lines of the Tanzania model.

Mauritius, chair of SADC until August 2005, received early warning bells with a report on the electoral system by a commission headed by South African Justice Albie Sachs that talked of the “democratic deficit” in the island as a result of the low representation of women and recommended a mixed electoral system. The government failed to act on the report. Concerted advocacy efforts to ensure substantial numbers of, and support for women candidates led to an impressive increase in women’s representation from 5.6 percent to 17 percent in the 2005 elections. But overall Mauritius missed the mark.

Botswana, home of the SADC Secretariat, and present chair of the regional organisation, experienced a devastating drop in the representation of women in the 2004 elections from 17 percent to 11 percent thanks to a lack of strategy that led to women being played off against each other in primaries and fielded in precarious seats during the elections.

Zimbabwe, where women’s representation declined from 15 percent to 10 percent in the 2000 elections, witnessed a marginal increase to 16 percent in the 2005 elections. The elections, in which the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union/Patriotic Front (ZANU/PF) fielded the majority of its women candidates in unsafe urban seats and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) fielded the majority of its women candidates in unsafe rural seats demonstrated the classic tendency in majoritarian electoral systems to short change women candidates in the heat of the campaign. 

Lesotho, which missed the mark in the 2002 national elections held on a mixed FPTP and PR system but without quotas tried to make amends by introducing a quota for women in the country’s FPTP local government elections in April 2005.

 

But by reserving constituencies rather than seats for women, the government sparked off a crisis, with some opposing the new law as unconstitutional for preventing men from standing in the constituency of their choice.

 

A Supreme Court ruling dismissing the challenge sets an important precedent for affirmative action in Southern African politics, but raises concerns that the negative invective generated may lead to a backlash against gender equality. Questions have also been raised as to whether Lesotho may not have been better off borrowing the less contentious solution adopted by Tanzania: distributing seats reserved for women in a FPTP system on a PR basis.    

 

By proposing a phased approach to achieving the new target of fifty percent women in decision-making by 2020, those advocating a Protocol for Advancing Gender Equality in SADC are opting for a measured, realistic approach.

 

The lessons from the last decade are clear. Targets and slogans that are not accompanied by careful strategies and action plans backfire. There is need to learn from each others experiences. And there is need for SADC leaders to walk the talk where it matters most: in their own backyard.