His Grace Bishop Diseko
Arch deacon
Church wardens
Mothers unions
Anglican women fellowship
Women in general
The author of short stories, Rip Van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving, also dubbed the first American man of letters asserted that: "There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity".
It is the same heavenly fire that kindled up in the hearts of heroines of our struggle for liberation, Lilian Ngoyi, Adelaide Tambo, Ruth Mompati, Nomzamo Winfred Madikizela-Mandela, Albertina Sisulu, Helen Joseph, Fatima Meer to name but a fewon the 9 August 1956. It beamed and blazed wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo, uzakufa! You strike the women, you strike a rock, you will die!
We read in the book of Judges chapters four and five that during Israel's dark hour of adversity, God also raised Deborah, a faithful woman as Israel's spiritual, judicial and military leader. This extraordinary woman who was the only recorded female judge of ancient Israel became the deliverer of Israel from 40 years of Canaanite oppression.
Though God the creator had made it abundantly clear in Exodus 20 verses 12 that both mothers and fathers, women and men, are to be treated with equal respect, in that degenerate disunited society, the rights of women were often overlooked.
Even though great strides have been made towards creating a non-sexist society, women are still faced with challenges of equality in their homes, communities, workplaces and even in the church.
A strong belief and faith in God was the one major ingredient that Deborah had for her to defy odds in order to achieve great things for her nation.
Deborah was chosen during a time of anarchy. The Hebrew tribes had settled among the Canaanites and began to worship foreign gods. As God's chosen nation, Israel failed to stand apart from its pagan neighbours, as God had commanded them. Instead of being righteous examples to the surrounding cultures, they also took part in customs loathsome to their God.
It was the righteous Deborah, a woman who encouraged Barak, the son of Abinoam, to heed God's call to duty and lead Israel's army against Sisera's 900 iron chariots. We read in Judges four verses eight to nine that she accompanied the troops to the battleground at Mount Tabor to fortify Barak's wavering courage.
To be fair to Barak, when he looked at the odds against him, he clearly saw that unless God was on Israel's side, he and his troops would be massacred. Being a practical man, he made sure God’s prophetess would be at the battle scene to provide divine insight.
Deborah knew, in spite of the circumstances of her time and culture, that in God's sight, women were not second class citizens, that God was not a respecter of persons. Her strong abiding faith gave her the conviction and courage to allow God to use her in the most unusual way.
How satisfying it must have been for Deborah to look down on the Plain of Megiddo, 20 miles of battleground, and see God miraculously deliver Israel's army from Sisera's oppression.
"So let all your enemies perish, O Lord", was Deborah's battle cry.
The Lord Jesus Christ often surprised his followers by the way he treated women. To him women were real people. Ignoring local custom, Jesus expected women as well as men to listen to and follow his teachings.
Most of us should remember the account of Jesus' gentle rebuke of Martha in Luke 10 verse 41 to 42 for criticising her sister Mary because she chose to listen to Jesus rather than help serve the male guests
In John four verses 21 to 26, Christ revealed the marvellous truth of his messiahship to, of all people, a Samaritan woman.
The Jews despised the Samaritans and their religion. For a Jewish man to speak to a woman in public, especially a Samaritan woman, was unheard of at the time. Jesus' disciples were astonished when they saw him so at ease with women, talking to them, teaching them and admonishing them, as he did men. Women were amazed as well and appreciated his concern for them, expressed so openly.
You should recall that, in the past, women were considered inferior citizens whose existence was limited to the confines of homes and care of the children. They were regarded as nothing more than possessions of their husbands or fathers. Women did not have the right to go to school, own property, earn wages, sign contracts, or take part in governance, and in the politics or elections of their country.
This had been the case in spite of records of the existence of successive generations of women matriarchs or queens, who ruled ancient Africa, since time immemorial.
Egyptian queens for instance, are believed to have governed from as early as around 3000 BC, of which the first female ruler to be named by sources, was Queen Ku-Baba, who ruled Mesopotamian City State of Ur around 2500 BC. The other earlier queen known in history to have reigned in Yemen and in Ethiopia is Queen Makeda of Sheba, whose reign lasted from 1005 to 965 BC.
Our country is replete with many similar examples of female dynasties, regents and rulers who took up positions of leadership during pre-colonial times and through the periods of wars of resistance.
I am referring to Queen Modjadji of the Balobedu, Queen Mantatise of the Batlokwa, Queen Mother Nandi of the Zulu speaking people and King Shaka's aunt Mkabayi ka Jama who helped shape the Zulu nation behind the scenes to what it is today, and others too many to mention.
During the launch of Women's Month, Minister for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya outlined the theme for this year's commemoration of National Women’s Day and Month as: "Working together for equal opportunities and progress for all women".
The theme is a national call for a united approach towards achieving gender equality by ensuring that women have equal opportunities and progress towards gender equality is hastened.
The ministry has reported significant progress made on legislative reforms to facilitate gender equality and improved representation of women in decision making position.
Representation of women in the legislature increased from 25 percent after the first democratic elections in 1994 to 44 percent after April 2009 elections. Our country proudly stands at number three amongst countries of the world with the highest number of women in parliament.
The number of women members of Cabinet (ministers and deputy ministers) increased from 18 percent in 1994 to 40 percent post 2009 elections. We have recorded a steady progress in representation of women at senior levels of the public service at an average of 36 percent at the end of 2009. We are confident that with much effort, a 50 to 50 representation is achievable.
We have however observed under-representation of women as paid employees in the job market, and the challenge worsens at top management level of the private sector. 16 years into our democracy, we still have white men holding 63 percent of top management positions in the private sector while African women are at less than three percent and coloured and Indian women at one percent each.
Our analysis of various studies available indicates that if we continue at the current pace of transformation, it might take us almost 40 years to attain 50 to 50 gender parity. This projection is in our view unacceptable and needs urgent intervention hence government has developed a Gender Equality Bill to hasten and enforce gender and racial transformation across all sectors of society.
Progress have been made in increasing access to education for girls and we have to ensure that skills development programmes focus on empowering women into careers that are still male dominated.
To enforce mentoring of girls into various careers, there is a call for all of us to support the Take a Girl Child to Work campaign on the 19th of this month.
We are proud that Sinini Ncube, a South African master's student at Rhodes University and Kenyan born Shikoh Gitau, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town (UCT) who were this week announced as winners of the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for outstanding contributions and leadership in computer science.
Each of these African luminaries will receive a cash prize of R67 000 and an opportunity to visit Google's engineering facility in Zurich and participate in workshops, panel discussions, breakout sessions and variety of social activities.
These two African women are the first sub-Saharan students to receive the award, which is open to applicants from Europe, the Middle East and for the first time in 2010 Africa, provided they are women. We call on the church and schools to encourage girls to follow in their footsteps.
Ncube, for her master's thesis in computer science is developing a method of visualising outbreaks of zoonotic diseases, which are transferred from animals to humans and vice versa, using a web based user interface. The technology, Ncube hopes, will help to contain outbreaks of diseases such as avian flu and anthrax and improve veterinary service delivery in South Africa and in its neighbouring countries.
The experience of the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup indicates that it is possible to minimise incidents of abuse through a combination of high community awareness, social cohesion and effective social and law enforcement services.
Information available suggests that the predicted upsurge in human trafficking and other forms of abuse never materialised. To the contrary, the reports arising from the contingency measures put in place in all host provinces indicate that children who went missing during the world cup were reconnected with their families.
We need to retain the same high level of law enforcement, solidarity and the spirit of Ubuntu demonstrated by our people during the world cup. Like Deborah, women in the church need to rise up and be at the forefront of their communities as leaders.
As community builders, you need to establish support groups for abused women and child headed households, develop vegetable gardens to feed the hungry and those ravaged by incurable diseases like HIV and AIDS and clothe the poor.
We call upon you to be part of crime prevention structures, establish support groups and work closer with Thuthuzela victim empowerment shelters and Imbeleko project focusing on mothers in correctional service centres.
The battle cry of the 20 000 fighting women who marched on the offices of the then apartheid Prime Minister, JG Strijdom, on 9 August 1956, demanding the abolition of the Africans only identity document, "the pass", which was identified by our movement and people as a "badge of slavery".
Today the battle cry should be translated into determination of our girl children and our women to enter and succeed in fields of science, engineering, technology, medicine, commerce and construction etc. It should translate into Hanna's cry against crime and lawlessness, a cry for unity, moral regeneration and a prayer against greed, corruption, poverty and disease.
The battle cry: "wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo, uzakufa!" made the bold statement that the risen women of our country, who were continuing a struggle in which the women had been involved from the very beginning of the colonial period, were as indestructible as granite.
It signalled the commitment of the masses of the women of our country to continue the struggle against apartheid until victory was won, a commitment they honoured.
The pivotal role played by women in the struggle against apartheid and colonialism cannot be over-emphasised. Today we more than ever need our women to take the lead in dealing with some of the societal ills like women and child abuse, teenage pregnancy as well as alcohol and drugs abuse.
In conclusion, I wish to say now is the time for our country's women to continue their rapid and welcome rise to the upper echelons of modern day South Africa. Ke Nako!!! Now is the time for women of faith, women of courage to arise and claim their rightful position in society.
An anonymous author wrote the following:
"A strong woman works out every day to keep her body in shape....
but a woman of strength kneels in prayer to keep her soul in shape
A strong woman isn't afraid of anything...
but a woman of strength shows courage in the midst of her fear...
A strong woman won't let anyone get the best of her...
but a woman of strength gives the best of her to everyone...
A strong woman makes mistakes and avoids the same in the future...
a woman of strength realises life's mistakes can also be God's blessings and capitalises on them...
A strong woman walks sure footedly...
but a woman of strength knows God will catch her when she falls...
A strong woman wears the look of confidence on her face...
but a woman of strength wears grace...
A strong woman has faith that she is strong enough for the journey...
but a woman of strength has faith that it is in the journey that she will become strong..."
Our journey toward equal opportunities and progress for all women continues and with the prayers and faith of our Deborahs, Hannas and Ruths, victory is certain. Working together we can do more to accelerate the advance.
Prophet Isaiah's message on the Glory of Zion in Chapter 60 verse one is much more relevant to our women today, "shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you".
Ke a leboga.
