P Mlambo-Ngcuka: Fourth World Congress of Rural Women

23 April 2007

Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Ms Lulu Xingwana
Ministers Present
MECs
Members of the Diplomatic Corps
Mayors
Councillors
Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

I wish to welcome you all to this beautiful part of our country's east coast
and to South Africa. It is a pleasure for me to participate in the
deliberations of this congress. As a representative of the South African
government, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the organisers of
this gathering for deeming it proper to allow South Africa to host the Fourth
World Congress of Rural Women. It is all the more significant that this
gathering of diverse women takes place on the African continent for the very
first time. Africa needs solutions to the vexing challenge of feminisation of
poverty.

Let me also extend praise to the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs
under Minister Xingwana, the Departments of Social Services and Foreign Affairs
and the Women in Agriculture and Rural Development (WARD) and to all those who
have contributed towards making this important historic moment possible.

As we say in Africa, Malibongwe igama lamakhosikhazi.

This international congress dealing with issues affecting rural women is
indeed significant for all of us in developing countries. Most countries
including mine grapple with the persisting underdevelopment.

This congress is a momentous occasion that draws attention to the plight of
rural women and their needs, the benefits and tangible advantages that are to
be derived from agriculture and other sectors of our economies, and challenges
to do with quality of life. In your diversity, you all come with experiences,
which can possibly enrich the struggle for women's emancipation and gender
equality. Our different roles and responsibilities as mothers, sisters, and
daughters offer opportunities and challenges.

The positions we hold in society are very relevant to the solutions we seek,
they may not be enough but definitely helpful for success in the fight against
women's global underdevelopment. What we do with our positions is what is most
crucial and I am afraid there is much more to do on that front.

This congress also offers you and all of us an opportunity to reflect on
these issues that has been deliberated upon since the third congress of Rural
Women took place in Madrid, Spain four years ago. Emphasis has to be on direct
benefits for rural women and not how laws have changed and how well represented
we now are because that is an old story now. What next?

My remarks today will encapsulate what you will discuss for the next four
days as you examine the the universal and wide-ranging issues confronting rural
women, share concrete experiences of successes in addressing these issues
worldwide. This work is a shared collective responsibility involving your
respective national governments, civil society, international and
intergovernmental organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and
community-based organisations (CBOs). The issues you are discussing are a micro
context in most of our countries even though sometimes they are made
marginal.

Goals of the congress

In this regard, in this Fourth World Congress of Rural Women, thematic
issues from the third Congress are still the key issues.

For example:

* governance for sustainable rural development
* globalisation and poverty eradication
* peace and stability
* health and environmental security
* peace and stability
* I would add human resource development for women and girl children.

To a great extent, these areas echo some of the objectives made in Beijing
in 1995 where we agreed on a Plan of Action that will be based on the
'eradication of poverty' and 'the prevention of violence against women and
children'. For viability of rural development, realistic solutions are
important in establishing a cohesive social force for our communities and
empowering women without prejudices.

If I may, let me share with you the agricultural dynamics in South Africa.
We have 'roughly forty two thousand (42 000) households for whom agriculture
constitutes a main source of income, there are least two million rural black
households who engage in agriculture at some level representing about 45% of
all rural black households.' So this is a significant number of our population.
Life is generally very hard for our people who till the land. Since the
discovery of minerals in South Africa there has been systematic destruction of
the environment, the African peasantry and land ownership hence our land
restitution and land reform policies. In that process of land dispossessions
women lost even more. We have not recovered from that race and class dilemma.
Our democracy has to change these realities to matter to rural women.

The International Labour Organisation, in a document titled 'Training and
Rural Development' reports that "almost 70% of the economically active women
work in the rural sector in emerging regions and that female farmers nowadays
are the majority of the 1 500 million people who live in absolute poverty." And
more disturbing, the same report continues to note that "the overload of work
women suffer is reflected in the lack of access to public bodies of social
security and support to old age."

In other words, in most developing nations women work well beyond the normal
retirement age and they remain the poorest of the poor all their lives.

That is complicated by burden of diseases especially HIV and AIDS. Millions
of children have been orphaned by the disease. It is indeed a race against
time. It is worse for rural women. How can we turn this tide around? Many
girl-children in this situation are destined to carry the load and burden of
family responsibility. It is incumbent upon all of us gathered here to come up
with practical interventions that are complimentary to women's developmental
processes given this reality. This is a political-social and economic
challenge. It is a moral challenge and obligation. We know girl children will
be the one to give up childhood to play adult roles.

Programme Director, delegates and distinguished guests, the challenge of
women especially in rural areas is simply poverty and powerlessness. So as we
speak about rural women we must call the problem by its name and proceed to
fight it. Poverty is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, which includes income
poverty, chronic hunger, and inability to access basic services such as water,
energy, sanitation, and being without capability to access opportunities that
mostly need education sometimes class and gender is often an issue.

It goes without saying that negative conditions in rural areas have a
greater adverse effect on women than citizens working in the cities and
elsewhere. Women are more affected by unrewarding seasonal wage-work. As
unskilled causal workers in large scale farms their overall value is not
recognised. And coupled with the demands of the household, they suffer from
double exploitation and patriarchy. The circumstances of women are not often
helped by traditional views on women's roles.

The factors that perpetuate poverty and reproduce it for large masses and
for women specially, are what we need to deal with and eradicate in large
scale. There are specific factors that perpetuate the poverty cycle and they
are massive and large scale.

"These are factors that reinforce a vicious cycle of poverty and keep
households, communities and women from contributing to their own development
and national growth."

They remain in the "poverty trap" which is in the multi-dimensional
circumstances that trap, sustain the poor in that state of poverty, unable to
break free on their own. The challenges associated with these 'poverty trap'
factors, makes it a macro challenge and it cannot be left only to civil society
and isolated interventions. It needs to be broken down and cover all. Dealing
with women poverty is the biggest and most urgent business of developing
states. It has to be mainstreamed. It cannot be left only to macro economic
plans or helped by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth only. It needs massive
macro and micro targeted socio economic interventions.

These interventions must target women and have expressed intentions to
eradicate poverty and women's poverty specifically and in large measures and
intergenerationally.

It has been shown that factors that reproduce the "poverty traps"
include:

* asset poverty, land, rural
* lack of access to affordable basic infrastructure
* poor health which reduces productivity and lack of health services
* social society safety rights with predictable lack of access to health,
education, houses; and
* lack of skills and education.

Even more so, poor people are risk averse. They are unfairly exposed to
labour market risks. They will rather opt for secured low paying jobs, and in
large parts are unable to fight for fair working conditions.

Poor communities are hindered by lack of resources from being innovative and
finding solutions and subsequently their talent is wasted.

What is more, due to their unsatisfactory human settlement e.g., informal
settlements, poor human settlements do not attract experts.

Therefore, poor communities need large resources, but are often under-funded
and "unable to manage large resources" in reality and perceptually.

In support, what is needed is capacity and a responsive state plus an
effective and purposeful access to leadership. Often the weaker and
under-resourced institutions work with the poor and women but find that they
are simply unable to rise to the daunting challenge placed upon them.This is a
reason there has to be a social security system especially for the disabled ,
elderly and children.

In this sense, the private sector in the first economy has to accept the
necessity of assisting in eradicating poverty, co-develop programmes for the
youth, health, schools, houses, FBE. This will ensure there is a win-win
situation for society, government and private sector

It is in tackling these large issues and turning the pyramid on its head,
tip down that we can hope to make a lasting difference. This is what we mean
when we talk about mainstreaming women empowerment and gender equality.
Practical interventions include:

* micro credit
* co-operatives
* adult education
* youth development.

In an enabling environment that allows for massification and quality, all
these initiatives have greater impact. There are critical choices to be made at
policy level to be responsive to women's needs such as when and how we balance
growth and redistribution . Furthermore, it means identifying what are
trade-offs, at what point is redistribution more needed than growth and,
therefore, targeting those we must distribute to is critical to make a real
difference.

Those attending from government and large institutions must please engage
with these issues with an aim to link and deal with the macro and micro issues
in national policy making. The industrial strategies of countries must speak to
plight of women whose talent in most countries is wasted but needed. In a macro
and micro targeted interventions we must close these gaps which are massive.
This will go a long way to deal with issues such as:

* asset poverty
* skills and education
* access to infrastructure
* ending prejudices against women.

Most of the problems of humanity will be solved. There is a big role for
technology in this regard but in fast tracking and broadening access to
services and resources. We need vigilance on technology and development. We
must value and work for partnerships. The partnerships are important but they
must be about making a real difference.

In conclusion, allow me to go forth and commend you on the sterling work you
have done thus far through previous congresses, and also to encourage you to go
forth and do much more with just as much vigour and energy as you will
deliberate in the next few days. What is important for all of us is to know
that if developing countries do not target women and poor people in the most
direct manner, there will be no meaningful growth and development for all.
Further if in Africa we ignore youth, we give up on our best hope in Africa
which is a youthful continent. Our young women will be another generation of
women at risk. I hope with you we can change the paradigm, it is not enough to
simply shift it. My government is committed to walk the talk, and to work with
all of you.

I wish you success in your work and beyond.

Malibongwe.

I thank you.

Issued by: The Presidency
23 April 2007
Source: SAPA