Review 3 final 2 - TAU - National Treasury

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE UNIT REVIEW | Gender mainstreaming in governance
• The processing of asylum applications remains
highly problematic.
• Government should play a greater role in promoting
social cohesion and integration.
• Women are economically impoverished and
deprived of or denied access to their rights,
particularly in the rural areas.
From these issues raised, a programme of action (POA)
was recommended to South Africa and the following
have been attended to since then (African Peer Review
Mechanism 2010: 349-350):
• South Africa has ratified the Southern African
Development Community Protocol on the
Facilitation of the Movement of Persons, which
regulates migration within the Southern African
region.
• Programmes aimed at alleviating poverty, which
include the social security assistance programme,
have been outlined.
• The government has increased the percentage of
no-fee schools to provide access to education to
a higher number of children. The national school
nutrition programme is to be extended to cover
secondary as well as primary schools in 2009.
• The government has engaged in programmes to
support children affected by HIV and AIDS. These
include providing support and food parcels for
child-headed households, and providing voluntary
counselling and testing services. (There is no
mention of access to preventative medication such
as anti-retroviral therapy.)
• The government continues to face logistical
difficulties in making access to water, sanitation and
electricity universal.
• A women’s fund to build capacity and empower
women has been established.
• The government has responded to the xenophobic
violence that broke out between citizens and foreign
non-national communities in largely impoverished
areas by appointing a parliamentary task team
to discover the root causes. (However, there is no
mention of the government’s adopting measures
to prevent further xenophobic attacks, although the
CRR recommended it do so.)
• The government has acknowledged the occurrence
of racially-based attacks, and launched a Constitutional
Education Programme intended to raise public
awareness of rights, and in particular the right of
access to justice for vulnerable groups, including migrants.
(The report does not indicate what government
has done to address failures in racial integration.)
• A higher proportion of the government’s budget
has been allocated to curbing crime.
• The government has recognised a need to
strengthen its anti-corruption mechanisms.
• The government has adopted a national strategic
plan that proposes a holistic look at the HIV and
AIDS pandemic by seeking to reduce (1) the number
of new HIV infections and (2) the impact on the
individual, families and communities. Larger budget
allocations have been made to cover additional
needs like improved nutrition and health systems.
The broader African community
and gender mainstreaming
The SADC region recognises, through various protocols
and activities that unequal gender relations need to be
addressed in governance. The SADC protocol on gender
is a triumph of forty-two women’s rights organisations
from across the region that demanded that the 1997
SADC Declaration on Gender and Development be
elevated to a protocol, and in its twenty-three targets,
issues of governance are embedded (Morna 2008: 10).
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Enabling change for development