Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
14 July 2009
Gaborone — Botswana, often cited as Africa's political and economic success story, is preparing for general elections in October, but gender activists are worried about the lack of female parliamentary candidates.
Currently, only four out of Botswana's 57 Members of Parliament (MP's) are women.
They say under-representation of women is a serious problem in all political parties in the country, the activists say, and are demanding serious changes in the distribution of party positions.
"In most cases, party leaders create an environment that makes it difficult for women to participate," gender activist Maungo Mooki, who is also chairperson of the Botswana Congress of Non-Governmental Organisations (BOCONGO), said, according to IPS.
"Decisions from the top brass within the party cannot be questioned because one can be expelled or starved of party benefits. This has made it difficult for women to stand up and challenge." Mooki said.
Only few politicians have been open about the lack of gender equality in politics. The ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) and its key opposition Botswana National Front (BNF), have each fielded only three female candidates for the 57 contested parliamentary constituencies.
The activists say that in most cases women have received nominations in regions where they have little chance of winning because they are up against seasoned male politicians with substantial financial backing.
They accuse resident General Seretse Khama of doing little to enable women's participation in politics, especially by not signing the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development, adopted by the regional body in August 2008.
However, President Khama, a former military commander, insists that despite not signing the protocol "Botswana has fulfilled most of the requirements in legislative reform as well as socio-economic policies".
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My Beloved africans as much as we want to have more weman in our parliament we can not afford to give peolpe free rides to parliament,you know i think we should be concetrating more on educating our mothers and sisters on how to they can better sell themselves to the voters , we should advocate for them to be considered for top political posts but at the sametime we must understand that we can not put quantity insted of quality at parliament,i know quite well that there are weman out there who are more capable than man and those are the knid of weman we need to have in our parliaments and they should come forward and sell themselves becoz if we gain give them posts in politics and maybe politics is not what they want they won't be effective. Lets Educate weman and the communities at large to vote someone because they are able and not because of their gender, i think we will be right to say that.