Address by the Public Protector Adv. Busisiwe Mkhwebane on the occasion of the Women in Business Seminar in Rustenburg, North West on Saturday, May 07, 2022

Programme Director;

Organisers of this crucial event;

Women in Business;

Distinguished guests;

 

Good morning

 

At the outset, I would like to thank the organisers of this pertinent gathering for deeming the Public Protector South Africa (PPSA) a worthy participant. 

 

As the PPSA, the Constitution of the Republic enjoins us to be accessible to all persons and communities. Accordingly, I readily accepted the invitation to be here today the moment your correspondence reached my desk.

 

We believe that it is through engagements such as this one that we will be in a position to breathe life into the constitutional imperative to be accessible to all persons and communities. 

 

Moreover, for us as an independent constitutional institution entrusted with the daunting task of investigating, reporting on and appropriately remedying improper and prejudicial conduct in all state affairs, women form a key part of our stakeholder network.  

 

As a woman, I am heartened that you have arranged for this gathering to take place outside of what has become routine dates on the South African calendar for issues concerning women to take center stage. 

 

I often decry the fact that the plight of women only occupies the national consciousness on International Women's Day in March, National Women's Day in August and during the 16 Days of Activism Campaign for No Violence against Women and Children or whenever a brutal case of GBVF captures the attention of the country. Outside of these days, it is business as usual.

 

Until the day we make women’s issues part of the national agenda every single 24 hours, men's treatment of women as equals in the business world and elsewhere will remain an ever elusive dream, which will be a pity because, surely, that would not the kind of country we want to bequeath to our daughters.

 

This is why I would like to commend you, the organisers of this gathering, for making a random day in May one on which the issues concerning women in business should be under the spotlight.

 

You have asked me to speak to you briefly about women empowerment and how women can run successful businesses, contributing to the country's economic growth in male-dominated industries. 

 

I am sure you know more than I do about running successful businesses. As such, I will not attempt to preach to the converted, as it were, but I will speak in broad terms about the challenges we face as women and how we can overcome them.

 

Before delving into this issue, allow me to share two true life stories of as many women from my profession. That is the legal profession. Their stories paint a vivid picture of where we come from as women, where we are and where we could go if we choose to become masters of our destinies.

 

A lifetime ago, the rise of women to positions of authority ahead of their male counterparts in this country was an almost unfathomable idea. Women were seen as beings that belonged in the kitchen. That was if they were not bearing and raising children.

 

For instance, in 1912, a woman named Madeline Una Wookey had to challenge the status quo, mustering enough courage to mount a case in court for an order compelling the Cape Law Society to accept her registration as an articled clerk.

 

Her articles of clerkship had been refused purely because she was a woman. This was the height of male chauvinism, when women were deemed improper for legal practice, with men blocking their female counterparts’ entry into the profession.

 

In a ground-breaking feat, Wookey shook the establishment to its very foundations when she won the first round of her court challenge. Sadly, her case went on to fall at the last hurdle, failing on appeal before three judges. The appellate division held that Wookey was not a “person” as required by the backward legislation of the time, in terms of which a woman was not a person. 

 

Now, Wookey was a white woman. If the system viewed white women of the time, with all the privileges they enjoyed by virtue of being of European descent, in those discriminatory terms, one can only imagine what the trouser-wearing community of the time made of the African woman.

 

More than half-a-century after the Wookey episode, in 1967, Desiree Finca, who hailed from Mthatha in present day Eastern Cape, rose to become the first black female to be admitted as an attorney in the country.

 

The late former Chief Justice, Pius Langa, once told the story of how a magistrate in Vereeniging would not listen to Finca when she appeared before him, claiming he had never heard of a black female attorney. According to Justice Langa, it was only after the magistrate confirmed Finca’s status with another attorney that the magistrate apologised to her and proceedings got underway.

 

Sadly, even as we gather here today, my beloved profession remains a man's world and I have no doubt in my mind that the same is true for the sectors in which every last one of you plies your trade in.

 

Every year on National Women's Day, we spend time on the internet looking up statistics about how far we have come in terms of attaining 50/50 gender representation of women and men at the helm of listed companies, in Parliament, in the Executive and in the Judiciary. 

 

The numbers always take us to the same place - it is either the numbers point to a slow and insignificant progress or indicates no movement at all. This is despite the conducive regulatory framework, which came with the democratic order we ushered in 28 years ago after shutting the door on apartheid.

 

We have a relatively progressive Constitution, supported by a set of progressive laws that place gender equality front and centre of our democracy. The parity regime has its roots in section 9 of the Constitution, which provides that:

 

“(1) Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection of the law.

 

(2) Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.

 

(3) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

 

(4) No person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on any more grounds in terms of subsection (3). National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination.

 

(5) Discrimination on one or more of the grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.”

 

To give effect to section 9 of the Constitution, the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act was passed in February 2000. We also have the Commission on Gender Equality, an independent constitutional institution sharing the important task of strengthening constitutional democracy.

 

In addition, as a country, we are a signatory to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, which must be realized by 2030. Goal number five thereof is the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

 

The big question is: With all these legal instruments, why is it that, as women, we still find ourselves in the same place, playing second fiddle to men? 

 

Perhaps it is high time we realised that nobody is coming to rescue us; that there is no knight in shining armor coming to help us out of this situation. This calls on us to place our fate in our own hands and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

 

Fortunately for us, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. There are strong women who came before us; those from whose stories we can draw important lessons about how to drag ourselves out of this quagmire. 

 

As an IsiZulu proverb goes, indlela ibuzwa kwabaphambili. We must therefore walk in the giant footsteps of those women who faced worse conditions than we do but triumphed so that we too can turn the corner. 

 

I am referring here to the iconic generation of 1956, among them Mama Lillian Ngoyi, Mama Ruth Segomotsi Mompati, Mama Adelaide Tambo, Mama Albertina Sisulu, Mama Sophie Williams de Bryune among many others. Inspired by these brave women, we must pull ourselves up by our boot straps.

 

They have given us the blueprint on how the challenges facing us can and should be confronted — and they did so under very difficult circumstances where standing up to authority could result in loss of life. 

 

And when we echo their war cry “wa thintha abafazi/ wa thintha imbokodo/ uzakufa”, we must do so with a sense of purpose and mean it with every fibre of our being, for it is not yet uhuru.  Failing to do so only turns that sacrosanct chant into an empty slogan and makes a mockery of their gutsy effort. 

 

The power is in our hands. Let us use the legal instruments including the Constitution, the law, policies and other prescripts to liberate ourselves from the manacles of gender discrimination and male chauvinism. It is in our hands.

 

Thank you.