South African Parliament and blurred lines: The ANC Women's League and the African National Congress' gendered political narrative

Abstract

abstractThrough a consideration of the 20 years that have passed since inauguration of South Africa (SA)'s first democratically elected government and the current relationship between the African National Congress' (ANC) gendered political narrative and the country's state of gender inequality, this article aims to locate the present state of the country's gender equality politics heuristically, through an exploration of women's parliamentary politics. The ruling party's gendered political narrative is referred to as a ‘palliative care’ approach, because it fails to substantively address root causes of unequal patriarchal gender relations in SA, which are manifested in appalling rates of gender-based violence and the feminisation of poverty.Using participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in National Parliament between June and September 2013, this article argues that SA's 2013 Women's Parliament reflects three important dynamics that currently define the state of the relationship between promotion of gender equality in SA and the gendered political narrative of the ANC. These are explored as: (1) the ‘hijacking’ of Women's Parliament and its monopolisation by the ANC Women's League, reinforcing a trend established by the organisation in using key State vehicles, i.e. Parliament and the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, to reproduce a conservative, anti-transformative and nationalist gendered political narrative on the ruling party's behalf; and (2) the ruling ANC Government's indecisive, palliative care approach to the well-being of women in SA. The two latter dynamics can be seen to have emerged from the third attribute of parliament: (3) asymmetry between women's considerable presence in SA's Parliament and lack of a substantive women's parliamentary politics in response to the urgent needs and interests of ordinary women, in lieu of patronage politics and party loyalty.