Programme Directors: Chief Deputy Commissioner Britta Rotmann and Deputy Regional Commissioner Grace Molatedi,
Deputy Mayor of eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality: Your Worship, Cllr. Nomvuzo Shabalala,
National Commissioner: Mr Thomas Moyane,
Chief Operating Officer: Ms Nontsikelelo Jolingana,
KwaZulu-Natal Regional Commissioner: Mr M Nxele,
Chief Deputy Commissioners,
Regional Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners,
DCS Women Officials,
Other Members of the Correctional Services Family,
Representatives from the Religious Fraternity and Gender Activists and Other Civil Society Representatives,
Members of the media,
Distinguished guests
Malibongwe igama lamakhosikazi!
One hundred years ago, in June 1913, about 700 women marched to the Bloemfontein City Council, in the Orange Free State, in defiance of the pass system. The campaign, led by Charlotte Maxeke, soon gained momentum and spread to other areas in Bloemfontein.
In the resulting unrest, which spread throughout the province, hundreds of women were sent to prison. The direct result of this campaign was the establishment of the Bantu Women's League under the leadership of Charlotte Maxeke.
These pioneering women stood up and confronted the status quo. Their brave actions are undeniable proof that even the greatest tyranny can be defeated by the actions of just a few. It is now over 100 years since these brave women began the journey for the empowerment, and liberation, of women. Today, South Africa bears little resemblance to our brutal past largely because of the untold sacrifices of women throughout our history.
As a country and government, we have made significant progress to ensure the empowerment of women and achieve gender equality. Since 1994, an array of measures has been introduced to promote women empowerment, and uphold gender equality, which have drastically improved the position, and conditions, of women in our country.
A quick glance at society will reveal that women occupy influential positions in government, and play an important role in decision-making processes. However, as we celebrate Women’s Month this August we do so in recognition that we must do more to ensure that women are firmly entrenched in every sphere.
We are also immensely proud that one of our very own DCS family members, Ms. Helen Leseyane - winner of the Education and Training Award at the 5th National Corrections Excellence Awards held in March, has caught the attention of our national media and the international community.
The Mail & Guardian recently featured Ms. Leseyane in its Book of South African Women, which features 50 most influential women in South Africa. These women range from politicians to artists, teachers, scientists and academics. This who’s who list now includes Ms. Leseyane. The Australasian Correctional Education Association (ACEA) has invited her to present a paper on education in South African correctional centres, during September, in Cogee Beach. Well done, Ms. Leseyane.
Ladies and gentlemen, for far too long, women have been history’s anonymous actors whose positive role, in shaping human experience, has been repressed. In our fight against patriarchy, sexism and gender inequality, we all have a duty to correct historical distortions. This will contribute immensely to the restoration of women’s’ human dignity.
This also means listening to offenders, women offenders in particular, whom society often renders invisible. The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) has been encouraged by the publication of poetry by offenders, where many of the voices are those of women. We need to do more and I hope that our Correctional Officials, in particular women, will also follow the example and begin to write, and publish, their stories so that we enrich one another through our varied experiences.
The reason why, in many European books, the “witch” was a naked woman was because the writers were men. An old African proverb reminds us that, “until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” This requires that a woman should cease to expect a man to build the world she wants; rather, she should create it herself.
In DCS, we must do more towards empowering more women from all groups (Black, White, Coloured and Indian). As at January, at Deputy Director-General level (salary level 15), gender representivity comprised 58% males and 42% females. At salary levels three to seven, there were 72% males and 27% females. The 50% male and female representivity is non-negotiable, and will be achieved.
In fact, women are able to play a more meaningful role in corrections and rehabilitation. May I remind all those in our employ that, while you are involved in the security of our country, you are not warders. In our constitutional democracy, founded on a Human Rights culture, we no longer tolerate the brute, authoritarian, “skop and donder” paradigm that characterised prisons in the past. You are all rehabilitators.
Your ultimate joy in your profession should derive in the fact that you are modifying people’s lives for the good of society. You must be a caring person, and must love people. Corrections is not a place for individuals who have failed to secure employment elsewhere. This is a dynamic, multi-faceted profession.
You need to be up to speed with our core values, mission as well as DCS projects on restorative justice like the Victim-Offender Dialogues and Reading for Redemption. It is vital that Correctional Officials continue to improve their education and skills – how else will you succeed in administering a programme like Reading for Redemption if you yourself do not read? Remember, “Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.”
Please be aware that this field of Corrections is gaining prominence by the day. In May, for instance, 45 students, from the University of Zululand, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Correctional Studies.
The department will also provide more opportunities for women to join this profession, because of the many advantages women bring in the science of offender rehabilitation and reintegration. Experience is teaching us that, “if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” Women Correctional Officials and those in management positions, men have not done you a favour to be where you are. Exercise your authority, when you carry out your duties, and insist to be treated with respect by your male colleagues. Men must respect your personhood, as well as the uniform you wear.
We declared 2013 as The Year of the Correctional Official. The Correctional Official is the link between the offender and society, and s/he is vital in our rehabilitation, education and re-orientation efforts. S/he acts as a counsellor, skills facilitator, motivator and career adviser.
The Official is everything to the offender. It is this Official who opens the door for the offender, and can tell whether the offender is happy or not. Being “The Year of the Correctional Official” does not imply that this is an event. We will continue to recognise the value of our officials, and express our appreciation.
As we reinforce the human rights culture in our facilities, we recognise the need to instill, and promote, fundamental human rights, and the attendant values, in our Correctional Officials. As we encourage humane incarceration, women Correctional Officials will increasingly be the DNA of the strategy to rehabilitation.
Ladies and gentlemen, sexism continues to be prevalent in our society. Sexism can be defined as man’s belief in the inherent inferiority of women, and hence the right to dominate them. “Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.”
“The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women. If it's educating its girls, if women have equal rights, that country is going to move forward. But if women are oppressed and abused and illiterate, then they're going to fall behind.”
Sexism infantilises women, and constructs myths, and stereotypes, in its representation of women. One such stereotype about women is that they are an enigma, a myth that was also purported by the father of the discipline of psychology Sigmund Freud. Freud confessed, “the great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?” American singer and philanderer, Frank Sinatra, once made this comment, “I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not.
I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them.”
The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, was worse. Before he was institutionalised at a mental asylum, he had made the comment that, “Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has a single solution: that is, pregnancy.”
Programme Director, women are not some strange creatures to be psycho-analysed by foolish men. Women are human beings. Their strength lies in the very fact that psychology cannot explain them as Freud did with the Oedipus Complex of most men.
Author Toni Morrison says this about the Black woman: “True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.
And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.”
Alice Walker portrays the experience of women so eloquently in these lines:
They were women then
My mama's generation
Husky of voice--stout of
Step
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors
And ironed
Starched white
Shirts
How they led
Armies
Head-ragged generals
Across mined
Fields
Booby-trapped
Ditches
To discover books
Desks
A place for us
How they knew what we
Must know
Without knowing a page
Of it
Themselves.
A Cheyenne proverb says, “a nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done. No matter how brave its warriors or how strong its weapons.” It is possible, however, “reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country.
The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.”
During our commemoration of Women’s Month, we should at least make a conscious effort to recall the names of the many heroines, in African history, who led their societies against their enemies. Such stories will go a long way in demystifying the super-ego complex of man, and put women at the centre of all solutions we seek today. From these stories, we can draw courage, and inspiration, as we deal with our contemporary challenges.
Our children must know about Queen Nzinga of Angola who, in the 17th century, led her people in guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese. Two of her war leaders were reputedly her sisters; her council of advisors contained many women. Even when she made peace with the Portuguese, she refused to pay tribute to the Portuguese king.
Queen Mantatisi, mother of Sekonyela, was one of the best known, and most feared, women military, and political, leaders of the early 19th century during the years of the wars related to Zulu expansion or Mfecane.
She was a strong, capable and popular leader, both in war and peace. While King Shaka was at the epicentre in the formation of the Zulu kingdom, we should recall the role of the Regent Princess, Mkabayi, which precedes the King’s role. Legend has it that it was Mkabayi who brought Mthaniya who bore her father Jama the future King, Senzangakhona. While the Prince, Senzangakhona, was still a minor, Mkabayi became the Regent and assumed the role of spiritual leader of the Zulu army.
Generations must know the story of Rosa Parker in the USA whose act of rebellion, against racial segregation, inspired a leader like Dr. Martin Luther King whose famous speech, “I have a dream”, marked fifty years on Wednesday (28 August). From this province, we also recall selfless women, of immense courage, like omama u-Dorothy Nomzansi Nyembe, Florence Grace Mkhize, Victoria Nonyamezelo Mxenge, Fatima Meer and Phyllis Naidoo. I make a strong appeal to all women Correctional Officials, and female offenders, to focus on one of these heroines of our struggle, read her story and then ask yourselves how you can emulate their courageous deeds?
Programme Director, this year marks fifty years since the assassination of President JF Kennedy in the US. In our efforts to rebuild our country, we recall his famous words, “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Today, our hard worn freedom is seriously being undermined by the plague of drugs in our communities.
This new enemy of our revolution, as President Jacob Zuma has appropriately characterised it, is the main cause of crime, and pain, in our society. I urge all women to invest time in finding ways about how we can eliminate this problem. This is a societal challenge, and government alone cannot arrest this problem without the full participation of communities.
I do believe that women can play a specific role in the fight against drugs and alcohol abuse. Drugs affect all classes, races and ages. In 1956, women from all races, and walks of life, were united in their fight against pass laws.
Why should it be difficult today, in a free country, for women to organise themselves to root out this scourge which is destroying our children - the very lifeblood, and promise, of our future? Crass materialism, and conspicuous consumption, is also a major concern. It is heartbreaking to learn that some of our mothers are also involved in the sale of drugs.
I want to appeal to all our Correctional Officials not to be tempted to bring narcotics into our centres. We will show no mercy to those who have been entrusted with the privilege, and accountability, to mould the behaviour of offenders and are involved in any corrupt, criminal activity, especially passing drugs into our facilities.
You are in a prestigious, noble, critical profession, and you will pay dearly for betraying our trust in you. Officials and Offenders, Do Your Part – Report Fraud and Corruption to 0800 701 701.
To all women offenders, and women correctional officials, I wish to conclude with this Irish Blessing:
May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
And the rains fall soft on your fields
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Malibongwe igama lamakhosikazi!
Thank you!
