T Joemat-Pettersson: Women in Agriculture and Rural Development
launch

7 October 2006

Programme Director
Honourable MECs Akharwaray and Selao
Speaker of Sol Plaatje Municipality Ms Thole
Acting Director-General of Northern Cape Provincial Administration (NCPA) Ms
Moera-Martin
Representatives of the financial sector and various non-governmental
organisations (NGOs)
Leadership of farmer unions
Managers and officials in government
Representatives of all women's groups
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Comrades and friends

I am extremely gratified to address this launch that crystallises a vision
defined more than 50 years ago. It was a vision that urged women of all races
to commit their diverse energies towards a battle for the attainment of
socio-economic change.

As we commemorated 50 years of the historic Women's March of 9 August 1956,
we acknowledged the immeasurable contribution to freedom and democracy by all
women that descended on the Union Buildings on that day.

In reflecting on the historic milestone of 1956 and the achievements of our
new and progressive democracy, we find ourselves pondering on the current
national debate over economic justice and its inextricable link to women
empowerment.

Economic justice is without doubt a key aspect of our developmental
agenda.

Yes indeed, interventions in the second economy are laden with challenges of
government having to address shortcomings such as lack of skills within those
that find themselves at the periphery of this economy. Rural women constitute a
significant share of those bearing the brunt of unemployment. They are the ones
that carry the burden of poverty at proportions unknown to many a person.

Programme director,

We are indeed duty bound to give a voice to the bastions of Africa's
agricultural heritage and the bastions of food security. Ours is to get them
organised into a powerful, united and active force for revolutionary change
within the province's land and agrarian landscape as well as in the country in
general.

It is our responsibility to lead well by doing well as we attempt to
extricate our womenfolk from that dead-end-alley of abject poverty.

We should proudly declare that central to our developmental agenda is the
soul destroying social dilemma of our rural women that can best be remedied
through the creation of a better life for all.

We are convinced that through the Women in Agriculture and Rural Development
initiative, we shall be making a significant contribution towards ending the
ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political divide among women in all
spheres of life.

Ladies and gentleman,

Let us promote WARD as a multi-prong strategy that seeks to address the
inequalities of society that have deeply scarred rural women. We need to accede
to the fact that central to the historic march of 9 August 1956, was the
question of the socio-economic empowerment of women that can best be addressed
through women being mobilised to seize all economic opportunities presented to
them.

I wish to urge all delegates present today, to respond with the same zest of
the women that fought bitter battles against a devilish and suppressive
apartheid regime. We need to remind ourselves of the fact that hearts ceased to
beat with blood lost in those bitter battles, nourishing a future of new
challenges in an age of hope.

This age of hope that had been attained through a struggle for freedom
presents in its midst an entrepreneurial drive that allows for the tilling of
the land, for a harvest of prosperity.

WARD serves to commit all of us towards forging and bringing about a vision
of a truly democratic, non-racial, non-sexist, united and prosperous South
Africa for all and sundry. It is a vision reflected in our endeavours of
bringing about equality by creating opportunities to the ones worst affected by
the ills of apartheid through the triple oppression effect.

Programme director,

Through WARD, we shall be laying a firm foundation for the empowerment of
women living on the fringes of society. Those often marginalised when
opportunities arise. They are the ones that have unwillingly found themselves
carrying the curse of dependent minors.

We are steadfast in our belief that in order for this ill to vanish, mass
mobilisation of women through the provision of information needs to be
unleashed at groundbreaking speed. WARD is a direct information base for rural
women to access information and network on how best to improve their lot.

Strong Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) development is central to
this initiative. Goat co-operatives have been formed and female farmers are
being prepared to be part of the commercialisation of goat projects with some
being trained and assisted to form co-operatives that will produce and supply
the Kalahari Kid Co-operation.

Programme director,

Rural women can learn how to utilise backyards for crop planting and
organising themselves into co-operatives. Rural women are the best to mobilise
in arresting the spectre of a decline in food production, because they are the
real bastions of food security.

For Africa to attain its New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
agricultural ideals and to be able and capable of feeding itself and growing
its economy that is mainly characterised by agriculture, women need to be
empowered from all corners of the African continent.

Programme director,

What I indicated to representatives of the Southern African Agricultural
Unions when they visited our shores in Pretoria earlier this year, was that it
would be quite inhumane for us to allow for the emergence of a know-not class
having emerged from an era of haves and have-nots. What disappointed me most
was the flawed gender representation and women empowerment appearing to be a
foreign debate to the attendees of a key forum of the Southern African
Development Community (SADC).

Other member states in the region need to join us in addressing the plight
of rural women because our pasts of colonialism and oppression are identical.
Like South Africa, we ought to free information and allow rural women to share
in the continent's wealth and in claiming their stake when the land is shared
among those who work it.

Critical to our quest of empowering rural women would be our task of
stepping up our efforts in bringing on board other stakeholders that would
equally want to make a contribution through the availing of information, funds
and resources. Committing rural women to the battlefront of our economy should
be an economic scene visualised and acted upon by all of us.

The likes of Charlotte Maxeke, Helen Joseph, Francis Baard, Lilian Ngoyi,
Rahima Moosa, and Ray Alexander have put before us a historic milestone well
encapsulated in the constitution. Their call and our constitutional obligation
is that of expanding our means of eliminating the pinpricks of the landless,
property-less and powerless.

Those that live with little from the less that they have are indeed our
rural mothers and sisters.

Programme director,

Having flagged the importance of WARD as a critical information vehicle for
our mothers and sisters and mobilising them to seize opportunities presented to
them by the Department of Agriculture and Land Reform, allow me to highlight
how we have fared in the past financial year.

The Department had allocated in the previous financial year through the
Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP) over R3,2 million for women
driven projects such as:

* Eiland Women Project of Upington (crop production), tractors and
implements R800 000,00
* 5J14 Hartswater Women's Project (crop production), upgrading of
infrastructure and purchasing of implements R1,1 million
* Drieplotte, Ritchie (crop production), tractors and implements R700
000,00

In encouraging and increasing the participation of women in agriculture and
land reform, we shall continue with our practice of prioritising on channelling
our funds and resources towards women driven enterprises/projects.

I wish to assure all delegates here today, that from the preliminary
allocation of over R91 million towards the Comprehensive Agricultural Support
Programme over the next three financial years, projects constituted by
women-only would receive over 30% of what is to be allocated each year. This is
despite the fact that we do expect all other projects to be constituted by not
less than 50% of women.

We will continue to be deliberately blunt in our agenda of ensuring that
women take centre stage in our green revolution; our land and agrarian reform
agenda. We extend the ownership boundaries within the sector for the attainment
of our goal of ensuring that 30% of prime agricultural land is in the rightful
hands of the African majority and Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment
(BBBEE) groupings by 2014.

Programme director

We shall pursue this agenda having acknowledged that rural women in the main
are our subsistence and household food production base. It is also for this
reason that women projects have received a huge chunk of our food security
budgets over the last few years.

Programme director,

Government is committed towards the allocation of state land to women as
well as allowing access to land through other programmes such as Land
Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) with the intentions of
creating a new breed of commercial female farmers. They are the ones that we
shall continuously target for our high-impact projects such as the Accelerated
and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) related projects.

In conclusion programme director,

These efforts mirror our resourceful efforts in generating participation
through profitable, competitive and sustainable agricultural enterprises, and
building stable and safe rural communities. Our quest is that of cultivating
countless commercial female farmers in our second decade of freedom.

On behalf of the provincial government and the Department of Agriculture, I
wish to extend my best wishes to all women present here today and trust that
they will choose the best candidates to lead them as WARD unleashes its voyage
into the space of our rural masses.

Thank you, ke a leboga, baie dankie, enkosi, asante sana!

Malibongwe!

Issued by: Department of Agriculture, Northern Cape Provincial
Government
7 October 2006
Source: Department of Agriculture (http://agric.ncape.gov.za)