I need a essay on gender issues in south africa (300-400) words please?
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Despite the South African constitution’s commitment to equal rights for women, the demand for gender equality is incompatible with the preservation of traditional authority in the post-apartheid era. Discuss.Women in South Africa have the most clearly spelt out legal rights in the whole of Africa and when looking at the newly formed constitution the situation for women in South Africa seems to have made a dramatic move in the right direction. After all the constitution prohibits any form of discrimination on the basis of not only gender but sexual orientation. And although it validates both gender equality and the institutions of traditional authority, if they come into direct conflict it is gender equality that will prevail. The national parliament has also moved from being 141st in the world, in regards to the percentage of women members, pre-1994 to 7th post-1994. [i] This signals a new era in South Africa, and is mainly down to the ANCs undoubted dedication to gender equality and the introduction of its quota in national elections.However despite the leaps forward in gender equality the fight for women’s rights is far from over and it is in the rural areas that the discrimination is most severely felt by women. The South African constitution may be one of the most gender sensitive in the world but this did not come about uncontested by the traditional authorities, [ii] who believed the introduction of gender equality would lead to the end of some African traditions, such as, Lobola, [1] and in the long term their very institutions. Traditional authorities are seen to be the biggest obstacle facing the women in rural South Africa. This essay will discuss the history of traditional authorities and how the colonial and apartheid eras have influenced and shaped them, the affect they have had of on the development of women’s rights and their relevance to understanding the rural women’s position. Also the broader tension felt between the principle of elected representation and the continuation of non-elected chiefs that has implications for the position of women and the country as a whole. And finally a brief look at the question; why did the ANC make concessions to the chiefs at the time of transition. But ultimately that the ANC-led government’s belief that they can recognise the institution of traditional leaders while at same time upholding the constitutions principles of gender equality and representative democracy is completely contradictory.Today in post-1994 South Africa the term ‘traditional authorities’ is an all-encompassing term in which it refers to ‘chiefs’ of all different ranks and that have jurisdiction over rural people. [iii] But this concept of traditional authority has, over the years, has been reshaped and moulded to not only benefit the white ruling governments that have dominated South Africa’s history but also the patriarchal systems. The two main institutions that were reconstructed were chieftainship and customary law. In the colonial era they were used as a cheap form of administration, later to ensure the successful use of the migrant labour system. In the apartheid era they were used in the states attempt to divide the African population into their ethnic groups so that they would be easier to control. Customary law may be seen by some as a long African tradition but others, as illustrated by Cherryl Walker, believe that customary law is not only ‘sexually discriminatory in the extreme’ but also a construct of the past hundred years. [iv] The ‘chief’ was also reinvented to become dependent on approval from the centre, for any chiefs that were perceived to be disloyal to the dominant white state, were removed and replaced by more compliant individuals. During this time the most valuable power the chief possessed was the power to allocate land, and it remains so today. This power was beneficial to the apartheid state but has caused massive complications for the reconstruction of rural areas under the new ANC-led government, [v] and has been hugely detrimental to the population of rural women and gender equality.
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