Special Hearings — Women's Hearings — 1997-07-29

MS SEROKE: Sheila, mine is not a question really.  I would just like to reiterate what you said about the need to break the silence and to create special platforms for women to speak up and I just want to give an example of what happened yesterday.  Two of our witnesses yesterday, who testified, had also an opportunity to testify in the general hearings that we had, but during those hearings they never opened up like they did yesterday, but because we created this environment, it was easy for them to break the silence and really go further than what they had said previously, to say exactly what was done to them.

DR MEINTJIES: Women need a safe place in which to speak out.  They need to know that there are safety nets to catch them as they fall with the pain and they need to be able to be helped through that pain.  It is an ongoing process.  What we saw yesterday was two women who are going to need further help, counselling, in order to rebuild their lives.  You can see how their lives have been crushed by that experience.  It is the same for other survivors of rape and sexual torture.  It is something that is ongoing.  It is not something that just happens during apartheid, obviously.  It takes certain forms during that era.
 We have it today, we see it in the increasing crime and to come back to the question that Yasmin asked me, what is that link?  It is to do with the way in which women are structured in the society, the lack of respect and the anger.  Women may not have the authority, but they have considerable power and there is enormous anger against women both because they do not have the authority and because they have the power and so it is young men who are doing all of this raping and this violation at the moment in the crime area.  They are doing things that we find very hard to understand and comprehend, but I think that the answer lies in this issue of gender power relation.  That is where we have to start working.

CHAIRPERSON: I have been asked to allow one or two people to ask Sheila questions.  We are opening this to the audience, but it will be very limited and focused.  If one has a question which particularly look at the involvement of women in political conflicts and what happens to them.  I would not like us just to broaden it away from the main thrust of this hearing, looking at women and their involvement in politics.  Thank you.
 If there are no questions, Sheila, I just wanted to make a comment that we hope before we write a final report your organisation will be able to advise the Commission appropriately as to how to deal with this issue whereby, for instance, you recommended that at the end of this there should be a Peace Institute.  I mean, people who are working in this area, as researchers, they tend to, they have said if you come up with separate, let us say, women studies, all over the world have not worked very well.  They tend to be marginalised, they are seen as, even if you call it gender institutes within academic sectors, people see them as women thing and it is like the trend is to say, look, we need to integrate these issues across the board.  So, I was not sure, I mean, even the whole question of a Commission on Gender Equality I thought, well, initially we will need it to articulate issues, but hopefully it will be an issue for each and every organ of civil society.

DR MEINTJIES: I mean the difficulty of saying we do not need them and we need to take a gender neutral stance is that then the issues that are of burning concern to women do get pushed aside.  What we need is to flag these issues by forming these commissions, by forming special gender studies programmes, women studies.  I mean, there are some people who argue we should not even adulterate the issue of women studies with gender studies, because women are such a neglected arena of research.  So, there is a lot of debate in this area.  I think where we suggest a Peace Institute is something that is broader than simply Women's Peace Institute.
 I think we need a Peace Institute itself which will be a living memorial.  The living memorial is to continue the work that is being done here, not necessarily in terms of continuing public hearings, but continuing research into the past in order to build a new society based on new kinds of principles, a new morality.

CHAIRPERSON: If, okay, did you want to ask a question?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct) absolutely (indistinct) that once (indistinct) that the (indistinct) that they (indistinct)?

DR MEINTJIES: I think that is part of the explanation.  In situations where women experience less economic vulnerability there is less violence.  However, there is evidence to show that in countries like Sweden and Norway the incidents of violence against women is increasing and those societies do not have the kinds of problems that we have.  So, it is not enough, it is not enough, it is getting there.  We are really speaking about gender power relations that are even deeper than the economic ones and it is to get to that, to those issues that we have to look at.  It is a whole ideological structuration around gender relations that we are talking about here.  We have got to look at restructuring relationships in such a way that both in the economic realm and in the more private, intimate family realm that you see the change taking place.  Economics helps, but it does not go far enough.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct).

CHAIRPERSON: Excuse me, have we got a record of what you are saying, Mam?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct).

CHAIRPERSON: Is the red button on?  Okay.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We are talking about (indistinct) and (indistinct) access to (indistinct) that is (indistinct) constitutes (indistinct) what do you mean by that?  (Indistinct) then what is (indistinct).

DR MEINTJIES: We are trying to get there.  I mean I think that it is very difficult to define exactly what it is.  That is the whole point of gender relations.  It is everywhere.  It is in every aspect of our lives.  It is not simply at the economic level, it is not simply at the political level.  It is in every area and every aspect and, in particular, I think I mentioned, the private realm and it, we need to identify all of those areas and begin to act in them.  Now, the one area that has been excluded from actions of the State, of course, is the private realm.  Now, one is not calling for action in that area.  That is an area that people do not want the State to come in.  In the most violent areas of women's lives, the private.
 When we were doing research for the Coalition, for example, in focus groups, women identified economics as the main issue for them.  You explored, further, what they wanted changed in their lives and they said, well, we would like our men to stop beating us up every day, but that was not the most important issue for them.  The most important issue was that they wanted jobs and security.  Once that was sorted out then they began to speak about the issue of violent family relations.  So, the issue is more complex than simply economic.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Indistinct).

DR MEINTJIES: And access to, I do not think that access to resources is the only realm of power.  I mean, politicians, political scientists do not see power simply in terms of access to resources.  They see it in much broader terms.