President Zuma, Speech to the PWM, 2012

No Woman, No Revolution, Part 10b

President Zuma, Speech to the PWM, 2012

This document is included as a further assistance in examining the questions as previously put:

“Is the Progressive Women’s Movement (PWM) supposed to be a subsidiary of the ANC Women’s League, and therefore a junior partner of the ANC? Or is the PWM a wider movement, open to all women, of which the ANCWL is only one part among many? To what extent have the problems and tensions of the FEDSAW period in the 1950s been solved? Or, have those problems not been solved?”

In the attached and linked speech to the PWM the President certainly does not directly address these questions. It is even quite hard to see, during many passages of the speech, where they refer to women and women’s organisation, at all.

Among many other things, the President said the following:

“To further promote the legislative environment, we are to fast-track the Gender Equality Bill. This progressive Bill will promote the prohibition and elimination of discriminatory religious practises, and eliminate discrimination in access to socio-economic rights.

“It will seek to prohibit harmful traditional practises. It will help eliminate and prohibit discrimination in employment and other opportunities for women.

“The provisions of the Bill also already talk to the need for the participation of women in the economy and also full economic emancipation for women.

“The legislation alone will not achieve our goals. This means that all of us, men and women, must actively work to promote women’s rights as human rights.

“It means that the Progressive Women’s Movement must work with relevant government departments on an on-going basis to promote development and women’s emancipation.

“What is important is that all these new or amended laws and protocols indicate that the commitment exists and that we are moving forward with the promotion of gender equality. Some progress has been made already in many areas.”

Read and discuss the document, comrades.

Apart from the above, President Zuma also, in the same period of time in 2012, made a speech in memory of Charlotte Maxeke, which is on the ANC web site, and another on the occasion of the 56^th Anniversary of the 1956, Women’s March to the Union Buildings, which is also National Women’s Day. The latter speech is attached and linked below.

These are the last documents in our course, “No Woman, No Revolution”.

·        The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Speech to the Progressive Women's Movement, President Jacob Zuma, 2012; Speech on National Women’s Day 2012.