Women’s Parliament

11-12 August 2008, Sugar Ray Xulu Stadium, Clermont

The Kwa-Zulu Natal Legislature, as part of its “Taking Legislature to the People” and public participation initiative, hosted a sitting of Women’s Parliament in e-Thekwini Metropolitan Area, Clermont at Sugar Ray Xulu Stadium. The theme of this sitting was “Empowering women for poverty alleviation”.

The KZN Legislature Speaker, Mr. Willies Mchunu gave a background of the sitting, which highlited that since 2004 the legislature has been convening sectoral sittings, as part of its programme of “Taking Legislature to the People” such as, Workers Parliament, Youth Parliament and Women’s Parliament. He further explained that this Women’s Parliament will be measuring the progress made by KZN Government in terms of implementing resolutions from previous sittings. The various Government departments were invited to present their programmes and plans aimed at women empowerment.

The departments that made presentations were Department of Agriculture, the Department of Minerals and Energy, Department of Economic Development, Department of Community Transport, Safety and Liason, and The Commission for Gender Equality. Each highlighted women empowerment programmes their respective departments were implementing both nationally and provincially.

The members of the community and women were able to engage with programmes and plans that were presented by the departments and some of the issues that were raised by participants were as follows:

• Support for women farming projects in semi-urban areas;
• Revival of community garden projects;
• Mining project opportunities for women;
• Concerns around disappearance of docket in police stations and high levels of domestic violence;
• Access of funding for women projects from KZN funding agencies to empower the second economy i.e. Ithala, SEDA, etc.

The sitting gave the community a platform to engage with parliamentary members and delegates that were representing political parties. This gave the community an opportunity to gain an understanding of legislative processes and discussions on women empowerment issues.

Recommendations.

The KZN Legislature needs to review the programme of Women Parliament since its inception in 2004, and to assess the impact it has made to women empowerment, and how resolutions have strengthened institutionalization and policy improvements in the KZN Government. Even the Honorable, Speaker – Mr. Willies Mchunu emphasized a need to review this programme in order to assess its impact, progress made and long term solutions.

The legislature should ensure that reports and resolutions of Women’s Parliament Sittings are distributed to local municipalities, libraries, (Thusanong) multi-purpose centres, post office centres, government websites and civil society organization networks. This will empower people with information and knowledge on this programme, so that they don’t wait for another Women Parliament Sitting but they integrate this information to their daily activities and enhance women empowerment programmes implementation in all the sectors of society.

The consultative process should involve all the stakeholders, especially civil society organisations during the planning, coordination and proceedings of the Women Parliament. The build up workshops with various stakeholder and civil society organizations should be convened in order to guide delegates for informed and constructive deliberations on proceedings of Women Parliament sitting.

The cooperate governance approach of working with local government to coordinate Taking Legislature to the People programme must be encouraged, with emphasis on local government to involve all the community structures and stakeholders throughout the stages.

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