Mbeki supports women
2004-04-27 13:55
Pretoria - Newly sworn-in President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday pledged his support for women's rights in South Africa, saying no liberation was complete without emancipation.
"As we engaged in struggle to end racist domination, we also said that we could not speak of genuine liberation without integrating within that the emancipation of women," Mbeki told dignitaries and a crowd of tens of thousands which had gathered in the capital.
The April 14 elections confirmed women as the largest group of voters and the strongest voice in favour of fundamental social change in the country, Mbeki said shortly after being sworn in.
"No government in South Africa could ever claim to represent the will of the people if it failed to address the central task of the emancipation of women in all its elements, and that includes the government we are privileged to lead," he said to loud applause.
The remarks came as Mbeki prepared to unveil his cabinet in which women are expected to figure prominently.
Some of the powerful women in his government include Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma; Minerals and Energy Affairs Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Land and Agricultural Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza.
Recalling the apartheid years, Mbeki said that under the oppressive regime, South Africa was a place "where to be born a woman was to acquire the certainty that you would forever be a minor and an object owned by another."
South Africa is one of the countries with the largest number of women representatives in parliament totalling 131 out of a total of 400 members of parliament, or some 32.8%.
It ranks in 11th place globally for the number of women representatives in parliament, behind Austria and ahead of Germany.
Four of the nine new provincial premiers, all of them from Mbeki's ruling African National Congress (ANC), are also women.
One newly elected premier, Nosimo Balindlela of the Eastern Cape, was sworn in on Monday wearing traditional Xhosa clothing and no shoes.
Mbeki has in the past honoured women, saying they were at the forefront of the liberation struggle.
"We must continue to pay tribute and honour the women patriots who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956," Mbeki has said in reference to about 20 000 women of all races, who marched that year on the same building where he was sworn in on Tuesday, to protest apartheid's harsh laws.
- SAPA