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THIS IS SEGREGATION BASED ON GENDER

06/09/2017 21:43:00 By Vusi Kunene

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WHEN formulating this article I encountered some challenges with our Constitution. What worried me is the kind of people we elect into Parliament; yet Parliament is responsible for amending the Constitution.

The way our parliamentarians conduct themselves I doubt they have the audacity to discuss and have the Constitution amended. No Constitution is ever perfect and that is inclusive of ours but it seems the people who should be working on it are not willing to or are clueless.

No one is identified by the Constitution as the person or institution that is supposed to teach people on human rights. We cannot leave such an important responsibility to non-governmental organisations that rely on donor funding for their existence.

I would rather have a clause that will say government will fund certain organisations to teach citizens of Swaziland on their rights. This brings me to the question of allocation of land on Swazi Nation Land. We are a patriarchal country where men are given preference over women. Our customs dictate that land should be allocated to a male and not a woman.

That is why you will find an elderly woman needing a boy child to assist her get land. This in my opinion is unconstitutional. I am basing my argument in terms of Section 20 of the Constitution, which says all people are equal. The section provides that people cannot be segregated in any way including gender and birth. I wish the section would also mention sex but that may always remain a wish if we will continue to have a Parliament like the one we have.

The above provision made me to think if we are not acting contrary to the Constitution when we uphold our patriarchal custom of giving land only to males when Section 211 is also clear on this. Section 211 (2) reads; “Save as may be required by the exigencies of any particular situation, a citizen of Swaziland, without regard to gender, shall have equal access to land for normal domestic purposes.” This section is clear that every Swazi shall have access to land unless there are certain exigencies but gender is not one of those exigencies. I wish we could know those exigencies as well so that people should not be denied land because someone is just unwilling to give them that land.

My opinion is that the custom that requires that women should be assisted by males to acquire land is discriminatory and therefore in violation of Section 20 of the Constitution. The question that then comes to mind is why are women not challenging such customs in our courts to have them declared unconstitutional?

After asking a few women from my area I discovered that they do want to access land but they cannot because they are females. I asked why they were not challenging this custom and the response opened my eyes. The rural women are not aware that the Constitution allows them to access land without being assisted by their male children or male relative. They are aware that there is a Constitution in the country that provides for women’s rights but they do not know what those rights are. I concluded that the women are segregated based on gender.

Taking the matter up with someone in the leadership of my community and involved in the allocation of land, the custom that women should be assisted by males was mentioned. When engaging him on the Constitution he told me that they were not aware of the provisions in it. He was not aware that such a practice was against the Constitution but mentioned that it is what they learnt from their fathers and they were also applying same.

If many people are not aware of the provisions of the Constitution, how do we expect them to demand their rights? It is true that some non-governmental organisations are conducting workshops in communities and are teaching them on their rights, but that is not enough. There should be someone responsible for teaching the nation their human rights.

One would have thought the Commission on Human Rights and Public Administration was responsible for that but it is not the case. There is just no provision from Section 163 through to Section 171 where they are called upon to teach and educate people on their rights.

What they are called upon to do is to investigate violations after they are reported or they notice them. In my opinion this is not possible because the people would only report violations if they are taught; the commission cannot notice all violations.

This is where Parliament should be amending the Constitution to provide for such. But unfortunately in my opinion, our current parliamentarians will not do such because they do not know their rules of procedure.