E Thabethe: Conference on Gender and Women’s Economic Empowerment in
Women’s Month

3 August 2006

Chairperson
Minister in the Presidency, Mr Essop Pahad
Officials from various government departments
Businesswomen from South Africa
Ladies and gentlemen

Advancing women’s economic empowerment through entrepreneurship

A very good morning to all of you, we appreciate your presence and taking
time from your busy schedules to be here. This conference is intended to
consolidate inputs collected from all nine provinces including some of the
townships. The process has been long but worthwhile. We as the Department of
Trade and Industry (the dti) are grateful to women who have embraced us and,
through this draft strategic framework; we hope to fully embrace you and your
enterprises. As the Minister in the Presidency has already indicated to us,
this year is a very special year to us as women.

All over South Africa and, I believe, internationally through some of our
embassies, we will celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Pretoria Women’s
March. It is because of this March that we women of South Africa are gathered
here today to see how further we advance our economic empowerment. Also as we
pay tribute today to all our sheroes, let us not forget to also acknowledge the
pertinent role played by some of our male leaders, including our former state
president Mr Nelson Mandela. Through the leadership and commitment of President
Thabo Mbeki, South Africa has become one of the countries that have transformed
its economy by ensuring that women play an effective role in growing it. It is
on this basis that the dti has gathered all of you here today to assist our
government to come up with an immediate intervention to redress the economic
gender-related market failures of some of our policies and programmes.

My deliberation will touch on the overall content of the strategy,
reflecting on the consolidated input as received. In addition, I will update
you on the recent developments in terms of supporting entrepreneurs broadly,
conclude on the way forward. Honourable ministers, ladies and gentlemen, as
already indicated, last year we as the the dti released the first draft
Strategic Framework on Gender and Women’s Economic Empowerment, which we have
taken to all corners of South Africa. As already alluded, the strategy is aimed
at addressing the market failures with regard to the economic empowerment of
women.

As part of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa
(AsgiSA) it is aimed at accelerating and ensuring an equitable share of our
economy between men and women. Part of the concrete deliverables that will come
out of this strategy is the launch of the long awaited Women’s Fund and
official release of the Women Entrepreneurs’ Directory for Procurement
Purposes. Our strategic framework will also facilitate the proper
entrepreneurial skilling of our women through the Women Empowerment Programme
(WEP). To assist promoting and creating markets for women, we hope to establish
an emporium that will exclusively showcase samples of women’s products.

To ensure that we monitor the growth of women’s enterprises, as I did last
year, this month I shall be releasing the second National Research Report on
the status quo of women entrepreneurs. To fully capacitate the
institutionalisation of women’s structures like South African Women in Mining
Association (SAWIMA), the Businesswomen’s Association (BWA), etc. through the
National Committee for Women Business Organisations (NCBWO), we hope to provide
support that will assist in building the leadership of those organizations,
whilst facilitating a common national agenda of women’s economic empowerment.
Unity is strength and these structures are critical for sustaining and growing
women entrepreneurship in South Africa.

Honourable ministers, ladies and gentlemen, through the very same strategy,
we will re-engineer Technology for Women in Business (TWIB), where the focus
will now be on skilling and capacitating women’s enterprises to innovate and
invent as part of growing their businesses. Again, we also intend to strengthen
the support of TWIB to directly support women’s enterprises in specific
sectors. This will include ensuring that TWIB acts as a catalyst for supporting
and strengthening rural enterprises through indigenous technology and other
kinds of technology that facilitates broader development of rural enterprises.
Through your active participation tomorrow, we hope to hear your views on how
we can finalise on the business strategy of TWIB.

As many of you are members of SAWEN, we wish to apologise for the delays in
making SAWEN your first port of call as previously indicated by my predecessor
Minister Hendricks. Through your tireless engagements, we have seen and are now
convinced of the importance of fast tracking the full establishment of SAWEN.
All over the country, women have urged for our intervention in this regard. To
try and address your concern, recently we have been working hard to ensure that
women in all provinces can have entrepreneurial support. As part of
facilitating immediate access to all our women, this month we will launch three
of our provincial SAWEN offices. SAWEN Western Cape is already in operation,
soon to be followed by KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. Later we will expand to other
provinces.

This has been the urgent request from our women in terms of ensuring that
they are offered one-on-one business advice, counselling and information as
part of preparing them to successfully engage with other public and private
service providers. SAWEN will also continue to be our vehicle in exposing more
women to the global economy. As part of doing business with the rest of the
world, we have alliances with other critical women’s business organisations in
Africa and Europe.

Honourable ministers, ladies and gentlemen, Cooperatives Development is our
best strategy to mobilise our communities as we grow our economy. Through
cooperatives, we will mobilise women to get involved and continue to work in
groups. This will assist us to work with women to drive the cultural industries
of this country, much untapped potential and creativity will be further
enhanced to produce proudly and truly South African products. The concept of
one product, one village will be realised through rural entrepreneurship
mainstreamed into our broader economy. Chairperson, between 400 and 600
co-operatives will be supported through the incentive scheme that we believe
could create almost 100 000 jobs and sustainable livelihoods, the majority of
these for women.

Honourable ministers, ladies and gentlemen, Black Economic Empowerment
continues to be a challenge for the majority of our women. The complexity of
the weighting scale was identified as the major obstacle for women. Through the
second Codes of Good Practice, this issue will be addressed. Out of the more
than 30 Transformation Charters that have and are being negotiated, we want to
ensure that all that has been allocated for women is accessible and measurable.
The active participation of all relevant women business organizations is
critical and highly encouraged. As for further development of the Small and
Medium Micro Enterprise (SMME) sector, through Small Enterprise Development
Agency (Seda), we have expanded our reach to enterprise development services
and have strengthened provision of specialist services and mentoring to SMMEs.
In consultation with municipalities, the Seda has established five provincial
offices, 24 branch offices and 87 Enterprise Information Centres. This has been
done with due consideration to geographic spread. In the remainder of the
financial year, a further three provincial offices, 20 branches, and 103
Enterprise Information Centres will be opened.

In conclusion, we hope to unfold the implementation of this strategy through
partnership both at local and international level. As much as we have already
piloted some of the key initiatives, we have set ourselves a period of five
years for full implementation. Progress will also be determined by the active
participation of women and their confidence level in building and sustaining
their enterprises.

For us as the dti, our commitment to the strategy is purely motivated and
captured in the words of Mr Donald J Johnston, Secretary General, EOCD: “Half
of the brainpower on Earth is in the heads of women. Today, the difficulty is
to move from the acceptance of equal rights to the reality of equal
opportunity. This transition will not be complete until women and men have
equal opportunities for occupying positions of power structures throughout the
world. This includes not only public law making and policy formulation bodies,
but also the world of private business. Society as a whole stands to gain by
accelerating the process”.

I thank you and ask you please continue to be our partner in developing
women’s enterprises in South Africa.

Malibongwe! Malibongwe!

Enquiries:
Henriette van der Merwe
Tel: (012) 394 1640
Cell: 082 572 8184

Bongani Lukhele
Tell: (012) 394 1643
Cell: 083 291 8689

Issued by: Department of Trade and Industry
3 August 2006