E Thabethe: Women and Environment conference

7 August 2006

Chairperson
Ministers from our sister countries
Our host, Deputy Minister Mabudafhasi
Representatives from all spheres of government
Representatives from various organisations
All protocol observed

Welcome

Good morning to you all. I would like to thank the Deputy Minister
Mabudafhasi for inviting me to this conference. Being here today gives me an
opportunity to reconcile my present responsibilities as one of the Deputy
Ministers of Trade and Industry with my passion for environmental issues. I
learnt valuable lessons as a chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on
Environmental Affairs and Tourism. Environmental issues impact on every aspect
of our lives and has special consequences for women, especially women in poor,
rural communities.

In this month where we celebrate and acknowledge the immense contribution
made by those brave women who 50 years ago challenged the might of the
apartheid machinery to demand the right to live in dignity, we need to
accelerate our efforts to improve the quality of life for those who live with
the indignity of poverty and all its social ills.

We know that our country is experiencing unprecedented growth in our
economy, aiming for a six percent rate by the year 2014. However, we have seen
in other developing countries that high growth often comes at a high price. The
effect is often disastrous consequences for the environment, again usually
affecting poor, rural communities. We do not need a census count to tell us
that women form the bulk of these rural, poor communities.

The challenge is therefore what more do we need to do to ensure sustainable
economic growth, that it can be shared to benefit women in general and rural
women in particular. What has we, as government, done to make sure that women
become the major beneficiaries of developmental policies?

Not only do we need to bridge the divide but we need to do this making sure
that women too are the beneficiaries and are included as serious role-players
in the South African economy. The Deputy President made it very clear when she
said that if Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA)
does not work for the women, it will not work for South Africa!

Outline

I guess the main question is how we as the Department of Trade and Industry
(dti) in particular, is going to respond to the call by President Mbeki to
bridge the divide between the first and the second economy. Attempting to
address this subject, I will simply share with you how we as the dti have
designed our overall strategy.

The second economy

Honourable Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, as part of my introduction, I
wish to introduce the concept of this second economy that has become a buzzword
in forums like these. It is a fact that a specific legacy of the apartheid
state was the establishment of an economic trajectory that has resulted in the
creation of a second economy.

Central to the design of apartheid economics was an enforced spatial
development process that resulted in a well-capitalised, relatively
technologically advanced, urban based first economy sector that is increasingly
relying on skilled labour and a second economy that is located in peri-urban
and rural areas and is associated with low skill requirements, poor
infrastructure and poor labour conditions.

It is important to note that the marginalisation of the second economy was
systemic and, it is this marginalisation that has resulted in the relatively
under-developed character of these areas. The majority of those who have been
negatively affected by this process are black people as well as women.
Consequently, in the process of redirecting the economic trajectory of the
first economy it is necessary to develop interventions that progressively
integrate the second economy. It is along these lines that we at the dti
developed the necessary interventions to close this gap.

Gender and women economic empowerment

Last year the dti released its first draft of the strategic framework on
gender and women economic empowerment, which we have taken via consultative
workshops to almost all the provinces. The strategy is aimed at addressing the
market failures with regards to the empowerment of women.

As part of AsgiSA it is further aimed at accelerating and ensuring an
equitable share of our economy between men and women. Part of the concrete
deliverables that will come with this strategy is the launch of the long
awaited women’s fund and the recently released 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) and as for 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, 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), through the
National Committee for Women Business Organisations (NCBWO), we hope to
establish a supportive fund to cover all basic costs of these organisations.
Unity is strength and these structures are critical for sustaining and growing
women entrepreneurship in South Africa.

Through the very same strategy, we will be re-engineering 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. As for South African Women Entrepreneur Network (SAWEN), we
are currently working hard in ensuring that women in all provinces can have
entrepreneurial support.

As part of facilitating immediate access to all our women, we will launch
three of our provincial SAWEN offices. 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.

In conclusion, initiatives that further the integration of the second
economy into the first economy should not be seen as an alternative to short
term interventions such as the expanded public works programme and the
provision of micro-finance. However, a precondition for the establishment of a
single national economy is the progressive integration of second economy areas
into the heart of sector strategies that enhance the competitiveness of the
first economy.

Because women are the backbone of the second economy, their empowerment lies
in the centre of all this. Together with women empowerment is the development
of both our rural and peri-urban areas, essential for us to halve and
ultimately eradicate poverty.

Malibongwe!

Issued by: Department of Trade and industry
7 August 2006