The Sunday Mail
Lovemore Ranga Mataire
The closest indication that South Africa is on the cusp of having its first female president came from President Zuma who in a radio interview last week unambiguously espoused that having a female president was no longer an issue for debate within the governing African National Congress.
Indeed, a few days after the African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL) had endorsed Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as their preferred candidate, President Zuma buttressed the endorsement saying it was almost given that the next South African president would be a woman.
While time will tell how Zuma’s endorsement of his ex-wife will pan-out, it is at best a subtle campaign crusade and a pointer to other ANC members to follow his lead.
President Zuma is expected to step down at the end of the year and whoever takes over will be the party’s candidate in the President race.
President Zuma was emphatic in his subtle endorsement of his former wife when he told radio audience that, “It is no longer a discussion in the ANC whether a woman can take a high leadership position or not.”
Dlamini-Zuma (67) has like her closest opponent Cyril Ramaphosa indicated that she is ready to lead if chosen by the membership and she somewhat feels buoyant by the ANCWL together with the party’s youth league, the Umkhonto weSizwe military veterans and the ‘premier league’ — a group of provincial premiers.
And given the fact that the ANC still commands majority support despite that support base having declined in the previous municipal elections, whoever is elective at the next ANC’s 54 elective congress later this year will be the next South African president. But the question that still vexes the South African body politic is whether the generality of South Africans in their diversity are ready to embrace a woman given the strong patriarchal sensibilities that still govern people’s perception?
The closest that South Africa has had in having a female in the top echelons of power was when Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka became Thabo Mbeki’s deputy but later resigned when her boss had been recalled by the ANC after a serious fallout with Jacob Zuma.
But things have changed now and Dlamini-Zuma is gunning for the top crown, which will make her arguably the third such woman to hold the position in Africa after Malawi’s Joyce Banda and Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Although cultural sensibilities towards female leadership are still very much entrenched within a patriarchal matrix, studies have shown that South Africa tops high in embracing women in top leadership positions.
A recent report on female leadership across Africa shows that the continent, particularly southern Africa, is doing better than other countries in the world.
McKinsey and Company’s annual Women Matter Africa research based on 14 stock exchanges in Africa’s South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Cote d’lvoire, Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt revealed that women on average are holding more leadership roles than anywhere in the world.
The results of the research were based on surveys done in 55 companies in Africa and interviews with 35 African female leaders and also an analysis of the financial performance of 210 traded African companies.
It was also established that most companies that were being marshalled by women performed better than those led by men.
The survey also revealed that Africa has the highest representation of women in senior management positions in the private sector than the rest of the world. What may interest many South Africans is that Southern Africa tops the list in terms of women in senior management positions than other regions in Africa.
Southern Africa has 20 percent of women in senior management positions, East Africa 16 percent, West Africa 11 percent and North Africa has 9 percent.
While most African governments remain dominated by men, women are rising up the ladder more than ever before with the global average of women in parliament at 21 percent while the average representation of women in parliament is at 24 percent. Women representation has been phenomenally rising in Africa since the 1980s. In 1980, only 4 percent of women were Cabinet members, with 19 percent of them making it to parliament in 2010, jumping to 24 percent in 2015.
But while on average Southern Africa tops in embracing female leadership, South Africa is one of the few countries that has struggled tantalizingly to meet the region’s set gender parity of 50/50 representation in all areas of decision making enshrined in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development adopted in that country in 2008.
According to Gender Links (GL), a Johannesburg based southern African non-governmental organization that promotes gender equality and justice across the fifteen countries of the SADC, women representation in parliament dropped from 44 percent in the 2009 elections to 40 percent while that of women in the provincial legislatures dropped from 41 percent to 37 percent.
President Zuma’s cabinet at its appointment comprised of 41 percent women in comparison with their male counterparts and the proportion of women premiers also dropped from 55 percent in 2009 to 22 percent in 2014.
It is however important to note that the ANC has a 50 percent quota but has not always stuck to this policy.
Out of the 249 ANC seats at national level, 115 are held by women.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance has not fared better with its former leader Helen Zille coming under fire for appointing an all-male cabinet in the Western Cape in 2009.
As a result of that residual anomaly, women in the DA hold only 27 percent of the 89 seats (30 percent). At provincial level, women’s representation in the DA declined by four percent points from 35 percent in 2009 to 31 percent in 2014.
New kid on the block, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) led by Julius Malema has a mere 35 percent representation in parliament out of 25 seats. However, Malema has deplored the representation of women in critical leadership position saying he “views the deplorable condition of the majority of women as a slap in the face for women who sacrificed so much for our liberation.”
In another show of blatant gender blindness, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has only two seats out of 10 held by women.
This represents a one percent decline from 2009, and a 14 percent decline from 2004. The decline also extends to the provincial level, down from 35 percent to 20 percent in 2014.
However, the fact that in 2009 the ANC managed to achieve the 50/50 representation of premiers is an indication that the body politic is somehow mellowing in its patriarchal views towards female leadership and this may work in favour of Dlamini-Zuma.
A medical doctor by profession, Dlamini-Zuma’s résumé impeccably qualifies her for the highest post in South African politics. She was the inaugural health minister in the post-apartheid South Africa and is credited for pioneering the programme for free health for the poor, women and children under six years old.
She also served at the Minister of Home Affairs where she initiated the programme of modernizing the civic department. Dlamini-Zuma was to sharpen her diplomatic skills when she later became Minister of Foreign Affairs before leaving the post for the African Union commission chairperson where she displayed her excellent leadership skills in manoeuvring the rugged African diplomatic terrain.
Assuming that men still cringe about voting for a female president, both the national and party demographics favour Dlamini-Zuma.
According to South Africa’s 2011 census, women outnumber men by 1,4 million. About 25,2 million are men while 26,6 million are female. Huffington Post’s (online publication) Mvi Hlophe also argues that the mathematics within ANC and the patterns favour Dlamini- Zuma.
His compelling argument is based on the fact that the ANC membership has declined drastically since the Mangaung elective conference. But that as it may, the premier league that supports Dlamini-Zuma still controls at least 50 percent of the branch votes, enough to see them regain the presidency.
“Rule 10 of the ANC’s constitution, which is the rule governing national conferences, states that 90 percent of the votes are reserved for delegates representing fully paid up memberships at branch level,” writes Hlophe.
“The other 10 percent is reserved for party structure leaders and provincial executives. The premier league faction has displayed an intimate understanding of this landscape and is highly motivated to vote together, in contrast to the challenging faction, which far better organized now than at Mangaung four years ago, but still faces a serious numbers challenge,”
He further contends that on conservative estimates, the premier league faction has the majority of the vote tied up and this assumes that the challenging faction displays the same level of organisation, motivation and discipline as the premier league faction, which he says is very unlikely.
“Furthermore, the remaining structures of the ANC are Zuma controlled,” argues Hlope.
“This ultimately guarantees the victory for the premier league faction by at least 60 percent to 40 percent, and effectively rules out Cyril Ramaphosa for president.
“Even though he seems like the obvious choice among the three candidates, he, unfortunately, does not have a strong enough constituency within the party. While he was in business, his competitors were building a base of supporters who would do the heavy lifting on the campaign trail.”
Ramaphosa has an insurmountable task of trying to derail an impassioned historic crusade initiated by women within his party who may not be kind for acting like an arrogant insensitive chauvinist. — Zimpapers Syndication Services
