Human Rights of Women
North West Premier Mme Thandi Modise has made a call to women to emulate the generation of 1950s and declare to all and sundry that South African and African women are tired of the institutionalised disrespect and dignity robbery brought about by failure to provide adequate services to them.
The call was made by Premier Modise in a keynote address delivered on her behalf at the 8th Biennial International Seminar Management Development for Women in Africa held at the International Conference Centre in Durban.
Modise said that like the Lillian Ngoyi generation, women should embark on a symbolic programme of women action that seeks to address the key issues affecting the affirmation of women as a key condition for sustainable growth and development.
The Premier Isolated education as a fundamental area within which the struggle of women can be fast tracked better that quotas that have attracted mediocrity that women are afraid to even pronounce on because some of them are failing the nation.
"The education and training of the African women should be a non-negotiable at every structure we are assigned to lead and manage. It is in the attitude of mothers towards issues that children will follow. It is therefore important to ensure that we accelerate the literacy rates of women and by extension that of our children.
It is true that educating a woman is educating a nation. It is a fact that societies that have focused on the education of women have the highest rates of development because literacy brings not only information to women but it liberates them from depending on their capacity to be married and/or marryable in order to be productive members of societies they live in," she emphasised.
Modise further said that literacy and education will in the long term bring a human rights culture to African societies and that It is through literacy and education that we can reach the marginalised of our womenfolk.
Through we will be able to free them from issues such an involuntary consent to polygamous marriages, involuntary consent to marriage that is not premised on love and many social ills we have recently grown to accept as normal when we know they create the greatest of discontents in our being.
Meanwhile, Premier Modise together with 10 women from different organisations are to participate in a four-hour live roundtable discussion to be hosted by Motsweding FM on Thursday 23 August 2012 to honour and celebrate women's contribution to the 100 years of the quest for liberation.
The roundtable panel discussion is to be broadcast from the University of the North West Council Chamber as from 20h00.