The Emang Basadi Women’s Association trail blazed the mobilisation of women for political action by creating space where women could converge to reflect, strategise and take meaningful action towards their advancement in politics. The creation of this space was initially meant to bring together women from various walks of life for the common purpose of workshopping on strategy, human resource development, knowledge sharing and political capacity building. The idea was that women’s various skills and knowledge would be brought to bear on the creation of a critical mass of female political candidates who would then effectively compete in and through existing political parties for office.
It has been quite clear since the last elections that, having created space for women politicians to caucus and strategise, an all encompassing organisation that included non-politicians and politicians was likely to run into problems of focus and relevance if it did not continuously review its programmes. One of the challenges has been how the organisation could maintain relevance for those members without any political ambitions. What role would they continue to play as members when there is a considerable body of politically ambitious members and non-member participants who were clear beneficiaries of the organisation’s programmes? There were two options available here.
One was to turn the organisation over to women politicians so that they could use this space to support their political goals and strengthen their positions both within their respective parties and in their elected office as parliamentarians and councillors. That way, the organisation would continue to help enhance the capacity of those in office to do their work effectively in relation to representing women’s interests. But Emang Basadi directed its energies towards creating a new independent organisation, the Women’s Caucus. Thus it never seriously interrogated what its own role would be after the Caucus had grown into a fully fledged organisation. This has resulted in an absence of a clear division of labour leading often to a situation where the two organisations pursue similar agendas with lots of room for conflict.
The second option Emang Basadi had was to convert itself from a membership association into a service organisation that would support women’s political organisations. As a service organisation, Emang Basadi would continue to provide for a fee, the services it had been providing for women politicians for free. It would also mean that its programmes would have to be reorganised to increase female candidates and enhance the effectiveness of those in office. But no clear decision was made on this issue, and so the organisation has continued technically as a membership association but practically as a service provider to non-members and members. This probably explains why the organisation has seemed to plod at a time when it should have been proactive. It has not restructured its agenda to take into account the climate it has helped to create. Meantime the Women’s Caucus has grown substantially since its birth at Emang Basadi. Its potential strength is that it is a cross party forum for women politicians and therefore offers space where they could caucus.
But the organisation has never effectively interrogated the issue of what the members can meaningfully caucus on given that they are, at the end of the day, competitors against one another for political office. Where does its political activities end and where do Emang Basadi’s start?
But the Caucus offers a safe haven for women politicians needing to get away from the pressures of male dominated politics in their political parties.
