A Letter to the President 2.0

Dear President Cyril Ramaphosa,

You have failed South African women.

Let me refresh your memory for the reasons why appointing Bathabile Dlamini to represent women is a slap in the face.
As president of the ANC Womens Legaue, Dlamini is no stranger to the struggles facing South African women. Let’s take the scourge of gender based violence, well of course she is familiar with those incidents. It happens often with people in her party and she justifies it.

All we need is a flash back to last year when, former Deputy Minister of higher education, Mduduzi Manana was caught on camera assaulting a women. The honourable Dlamini’s response, “Don’t start from him. If we want to say everyone who occupies a senior position in government we must know his track record because there are people who are worse than him….”

Dlamini does not believe in empowering or supporting women. Why do I say this you ask? During the run up to the ANC presidential election, a number of female candidates emerged as nominees, including Nkhosizana- Dlamini Zuma, Lindiwe Sisulu and Baleka Mbete. Yet, Dlamini and her Womens League only endorsed Dlamini- Zuma for the Presidency, leaving the other candidates out in the cold. This despite expressing in public that she is in support of women’s emancipation? Guess the minister lied, again.

She also believes that she is first and foremost a cadre of the ANC before she is a woman, representing the Womens League. She has made this point crystal clear numerous times in media interviews and recently during the ANC NEC.

“We have to express our disappointment as members of the ANC because we are members of the ANC before we are members of the ANCWL. The Womens League is at the centre of bringing hope to the women of South Africa and we think that we are able to drive the struggle for women’s emancipation. We also want to take this opportunity and say we fought a good fight and the struggle for the emancipation for women must continue,” Dlamini said.

In other words, Dlamini believes, at all times the ANC comes first, while the needs or concerns of women, take a back seat.
One other thing, burnt into our memory is when Dlamini shunned protesters at the #RememberKhwezi silent demonstration in 2016. This sought to remind our then President Jacob Zuma that we remember Fezekile Kuzwayo, the women he was accused of raping and other survivors.

Dlamini blamed the EFF for the demonstration. She said: “We are not going to allow reactionaries and tyranists who are supported by clandestine forces, who pay them for any action to embarrass our growing democracy and the ruling party.”

“It was clearly choreographed and the way they handled the whole thing is not professional. They were supposed to ask the president to deal with the issue and apologise and then ask him to continue. We are trivialising the issues of gender-based violence. It [the protest] was about the president of the country. The president went to court,” she said.

Mr President, South African woman have barely recovered from being governed by President Jacob Zuma. A man who was accused of raping the daughter of a childhood friend, while his party vilified the woman who was brave enough to speak out. Through all of this he continued to climb his way to the top while her life was destroyed. We cannot tolerate a woman who has a proven track record of leaving women in the lurch.

Let’s take a moment to yet again mourn the disregard for women’s rights and welcome the new minister of Women in the presidency, Bathabile Dlamini.

Yours sincerely,
The Justice Lady