Regional women politicians stir local peers
Gothataone Moeng | Tuesday April 15, 2014 12:40
She said this would ensure that African countries are able to meet the quotas they have set for women representation in Parliament and other decision-making positions.
African women have been working tirelessly towards meeting these quotas with very little success, she said.
“Where is the 30 percent or 50 percent representation going to come from if we don’t mentor young women?” she said.
Kapata, also an MP in Zambia, was speaking in Gaborone at a meeting with the Botswana Parliamentary Caucus on Women.
She said there is a need to entice women towards politics and to encourage their contesting for political office. She also cautioned women politicians against solely depending on other women to vote for them, saying too often women depend on the fact that they are usually the majority in any population. Women should not leave men out of their campaign audiences, she said.
According to the 2011 Population Census, Botswana has 1,035,608 women, compared to 989,179 men. Statistics Botswana has in the past stated that these figures mean that currently for every 100 women, there are 96 men, a slight improvement from the 2001 census, in which there were 100 women to 94 men.
Despite their majority, there are currently only five women MPs in a House made up of 61 legislators (57 directly elected, four specially nominated). For the coming national elections, the opposition Botswana Congress Party has fielded seven women parliamentary candidates, followed by the ruling Botswana Democratic Party with six and the Umbrella for Democratic Change lagging far behind with only one.
Kapata further said there is need for women political organisations to engage civil society, especially those that advocate for issues affecting women. These organisations can help create political funds to resource women candidates who often do not have the financial muscle to participate in elections.
Along with Lucia Witbooi, Namibian MP and Chairperson of the CWP for Africa, Kapata was in Gaborone on a visit to touch base with women parliamentarians and to lobby them to start a CWP chapter. Under the CWP, Botswana, alongside Namibia, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique fall under the Central Africa region. Mozambique and Botswana are the only two countries in the region that are yet to establish a CWP chapter.
Kapata explained that part of the visit was to share ideas on how to promote women’s participation in politics as well as ideas for women empowerment in general.
For her part, Witbooi encouraged the Parliamentary Caucus on Women to establish a CWP chapter in order to allow women politicians in the region to speak with a collective voice about issues that affect them. She said establishing a CWP chapter would allow women to better push for the enhanced participation of women in Parliament, which she said is a human right.
“We are not begging, with our numbers in the population, we have a right to have representation,” she said.
Part of the CWP’s mission is to have Parliaments in the Commonwealth achieving equitable representation and participation and to promote the representation of women.
Chairperson of the Parliamentary Caucus on Women, Botlogile Tshireletso, who is also the Member of Parliament for Mahalapye East, acknowledged that Botswana still has a long way to go regarding women’s participation in politics.
She said women are disadvantaged by the First-Past-the-Post electoral system and the lack of political funding. Botswana’s female representation in Parliament currently stands at nine percent, far below the 50 percent recommended by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Gender Protocol.