C Dowry: Women in Agriculture for Rural Development Conference

14 December 2006

Thank you for the invitation to come and address your conference. This is a
very important conference as you have and will address the crucial issue of the
role of women in agriculture and the right to land and what I believe to be
very important, and that is of food security and related projects.

Before I talk about the specifics of agriculture, I want to take you back in
history to 9 August 1956.

On that day 20 000 women from all parts of South Africa staged a second
march on the Union Buildings. Prime Minister Strijdom, who had been notified of
the women's mission, was not there to receive them. In lieu of a meeting the
women left bundles of petitions containing more than 100 000 signatures at the
Prime Minister's door. Outside the government building they stood silently for
30 minutes, their hands raised in the congress salute.

African women fought the pass laws as they had fought no other issue. Passes
were the symbol of their deepest oppression. It was through the pass laws that
the influx control system was enforced. It was influx control that turned their
husbands into migrant workers and made them into widows in the reserves. Passes
deprived them of the basic right to live with their husbands and to raise their
children in a stable family unit. Throughout the 1950s, an average of 339 255
African men were convicted each year for pass laws violations. If passes were
extended to African women that figure would more than double. If mothers were
arrested as well as fathers, the women asked who would care for the
children?

A flyer printed in 1957 carried the following challenge, "Who knows better
than any African woman what it means to have a husband who must carry a pass?"
The flyer continued, "Passes mean prison, passes mean broken homes, passes mean
suffering and misery for every African family in our country, passes are just
another way in which the government makes slaves of the Africans, passes mean
hunger and unemployment, passes are an insult." The extension of passes to
women constituted an "attack on us, our mothers, sisters, children and
families" the flyer concluded an attack that would be fought with all the
women's strength. Other documents were written in a similar vein.

Generations of women had experienced the meaning of the pass laws as they
witnessed their husbands become victims of "raids, arrests, loss of pay, long
hours at the pass office, weeks in cells awaiting trial and forced farm
labour." They had seen their men subjected to "punishment and misery not for a
crime but for the lack of a pass." The extension of passes to women would mean
the further destruction of family life, that children would be "left uncared
for, helpless, and others (would be) torn from babies for failure to produce a
pass."

The petition concluded with a warning to the Prime Minister, "African women
shall not rest until all pass laws and all forms of permits restricting our
freedoms have been abolished. We shall not rest until we have won for our
children their fundamental rights of freedom, justice and security."

I took you back there to say to you that women have played a crucial part in
liberating this country and I believe that women have a vital role to liberate
us in Agriculture.

For us in the Department of Agriculture in the Western Cape, the challenge
lies in the empowerment of people in this area through the provision of land
and support for sustainable Agricultural projects. We believe that we can fight
poverty in this home for all, through well planned agricultural projects.

South Africa as a country is largely self-sufficient in food, yet, some of
our people are faced with hunger and malnutrition. There are also a number of
South Africans who are vulnerable to food insecurity. Among these are women,
children and the elderly. It is true that many people are still going hungry
every day in South Africa and in the Western Cape. It is sad that this often
occurs within walking distance from full granaries and packing sheds. Or in
other words the food is available but people do not have the money to buy
food.

There are a few things that we have to do in order to be successful. The
first is to provide the land and equip people with the necessary skills to farm
in a sustainable manner. We need to assist with the creation of the
infrastructure on the land and we need to make sure that people don't have to
wait so long before we finalise projects and provide the funding for those
projects. We must do whatever we can to help people to produce food within
their limited means.

Within the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition Programme (IFSNP),
designed at national level, agriculture is seen as a major contributor to food
security. The role of agriculture is defined as providing food for the insecure
and to use farming as a means for growing food. Our figures indicate that, for
example, the number of persons (households) that received food parcels in 2003
were estimated at 20 000 beneficiaries and the Department estimated that about
15 percent of this group could still become clients of agriculture, through
mainly food garden initiatives.

The mandate of the Farmer Support and Development (FSD) programme of the
Department of Agriculture in this province includes food security, farmer
settlement, farmer support services and farm worker development. The
sub-programme food security co-ordinates and implements various food production
projects as highlighted and adopted by the Integrated Food Security Strategy
(IFSS) of South Africa. It also provides information and facilitates training
of community garden and animal production beneficiaries.

What must be stressed is the greater need for partnerships between the
Department and non-government organisations (NGOs) for the successful
implementation of projects. For instance, a memorandum of understanding (MoU)
was signed between the Rotary Club and the Department to roll out various food
production projects in 2006/07.

I believe that the challenge is to reduce the number of food insecure
households by half by 2015, by increasing domestic production, improving food
safety, sustaining safety nets and emergency food management.

We have the means in this province to address food security on various
levels. Where there is water and land available my Department can assist and
support food gardens not only for subsistence farming but also for communities
and for markets.

Furthermore, agriculture is a key provider of jobs in this province. The
political and social stability of South Africa is dependent on the successful
supporting of the poor to make a dignified living. This is especially true in
some of the urban areas of the Western Cape where some agricultural activities
provide the necessary basic means of survival and dignity. South Africa have
almost 57 980 commercial farms of which 8 352 are in the Western Cape. These
farms provide work to approximately 220 000 workers and the number of
dependants can be multiplied by four to determine how many people are dependent
on farming.

It is said that in many cases people have land but poverty and food
insecurity is still high. The Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for
South Africa (AsgiSA) has termed this challenge "dead assets in the hands of
the poor." We need to activate these assets and make them work for the people.
The national Minister of Agriculture, Ms Lulu Xingwana, requested us to use
November as the month to going back to the fields to plough. Sibuyele' masimini
siyolima. In this province we did that. Together with the management team in my
Department we spent a day with the people as we worked with them in the
riverside project in Khayelitsha.

At a meeting with the national Minister we agreed on the "Ilima/Letsema"
campaign.

We will through this campaign build on and leverage programmes already
existing in the provinces; programmes that offer support to small scale farming
in the form of fencing, seeds, fertilisers, extension support and irrigation as
an example.

We have adopted the idea the idea of Siyagijima, which means 'let us run' or
differently put 'let's hurry up.' We cannot allow land to lie fallow! We need
to utilise the land and unleash this productive asset to feed our families and
communities, create employment and contribute towards economic growth and
development of local and rural economies.

I want to end off by saying to you that women have a vital role to play in
the challenge that we face in agriculture. Earlier this year at the female
farmer of the year function I said the following:

"Just as in every other aspect of life, the role and contribution of women
in agriculture needs to be recognised and valued and therefore this competition
has a two folded goal namely, to acknowledge the growing contribution of women
to agriculture and therefore the economy, and secondly as an awareness campaign
that agriculture is not only for men with calloused hands but that there are
more and more women who are becoming successful farmers."

The entrants to the competition are all role models in society and should be
an inspiration to us all and therefore I am exited about the formal sector and
the activities of fully fledged commercial farmers amongst the entrants,
because that is what you are. And I believe that as much as we call this event
a female farmer of the year competition, you are equal and even better than a
lot of men and should therefore justifiably be acknowledged as commercial
farmers. But let me stress that we are proud of the contribution and the
activities of the individuals and the groups who are committed to their food
gardens in an effort to feed the family and to take care of various community
programmes by providing essential vegetables as part of the nutritional
requirements of patients and children alike.

Together with the government, I believe that women will have to play a major
role in the food security programme in order to feed the nation. The Department
of Agriculture in the Western Cape want you to be our partners in developing
and growing of this very important programme. In this way we will not only
address the plight of the needy but we will contribute to the efforts of
agriculture to feed the nation.

I want to say to all the ladies, 'you all have a lot of knowledge and
experience' some you got from other people, some from books but I believe that
most of your knowledge you gathered through your own hard work and dedication,
by trial and error and commitment and I want to ask of you to allow others to
light their candles in the knowledge that you have gained during this
process.

Our women in the Western Cape are ordinary people in ordinary communities
doing extraordinary things in agriculture.

I believe we can achieve much if we join hands with each other in order to
build this country and to make sure that we can put food on the table and fight
poverty through the development of agriculture.

Issued by: Department of Agriculture, Western Cape Provincial
Government
14 December 2006