Woman quota' changes dynamics of Lesotho vote
By Stephanie Hanes, Special for USA TODAY
MASERU, Lesotho — When word spread that the government wanted women to take part in Lesotho's first local elections, Mateboho Chuene decided to run — without asking her husband's permission.
It was a bold step in this southern African kingdom of 1.9 million people. Lesotho (leh-SOO-too) is a rugged land where patriarchal tradition runs deep and women are legal minors. They cannot get bank loans, inherit land or have surgery without a male relative's consent.
Chuene, a 51-year-old clothes hawker, was not alone. Thanks to a new electoral process that reserved every third ward for female candidates, almost 400 women, including Chuene, moved into Lesotho's local government councils on April 30. Women already accounted for about 10% of the lawmakers in the parliament.
"There are many more (women) participating. It is a good thing. Women can say things that men can't," Chuene says from her village a few minutes' drive from downtown Maseru, the capital. "Women are tough." Lesotho's minister of local government, Ponts'o Matumelo Sekatle, has called the "woman quota" a significant step toward honoring a Southern African Development Community pledge that at least 30% of the region's officeholders be women by this year.
The 13-country organization notes that international organizations such as the United Nations linked women's rights with general improvements in society, including democracy and health.
Lesotho isn't the only country heeding the call. Tanzania has reserved 20% of its parliament seats for women. Mozambique's parliament is 30% female, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, more than double the percentage of women in the U.S. Congress. In South Africa, considered the economic leader of the region, about 30% of parliament members are women, and the ruling African National Congress has debated a 50% quota.
For most of the 20th century, more than half of Lesotho's men have left to work in South African mines. Women stayed to tend fields, take care of livestock and care for elders. Girls went to school when boys headed for the mountains with cattle herds, the source of family wealth and status. As a result, women in Lesotho tend to be better educated than men.
But under the country's dual legal system — civil and traditional law exist side by side — women have few rights. A wife needs her husband's consent for various business and legal transactions. Unmarried women must ask their fathers, brothers or sons.
Parity 'not that simple'
The effort to include women in local government is aimed at addressing the disparity.
"This will put women in league with men," says Leshele Thoahlane, chairman of Lesotho's Independent Electoral Commission. "I think very soon there will be parity all the way through society."
Others are not so sure.
"We found, of course, that it is not that simple," says Colleen Lowe Morna, executive director of Gender Links, a South Africa-based organization that studies the impact of women in politics.
In Lesotho, a Maryland-sized country of sweeping valleys and craggy mountains that is surrounded by South Africa, many men complained about the quota, Thoahlane says. They said it was discriminatory: No men could run in wards earmarked for women.
The head of the opposition Basutoland Congress Party, Molapo Qhobela, was quoted in the Maseru-based Mopheme newspaper as saying the quota was "sexual apartheid" that violated constitutional protections against discrimination.
Thoahlane says men also questioned whether women could perform local leadership tasks.
For instance, chiefs traditionally have been responsible for rounding up cattle grazing on the wrong land and then collecting penalty money from the cows' owners. "People say, how will women arrest the cattle?" Thoahlane says. "But of course the chief didn't go himself. The women can also delegate."
Some women's rights advocates worry the quota might harm their cause. "The way it was implemented leaves room for conflict after the elections," says Tsebo Matsasa, of the Lesotho Council of NGOs, an umbrella group of non-governmental organizations. "We support women participating in politics. But if you cannot do it right, people lose confidence."
He says Lesotho should have set aside seats for women without excluding men from some wards. It could have been accomplished with councilwide rather than ward-based elections, he says, or separate ballots for the one-third female block.
Matsasa says political training for new officeholders will be needed.
"We need to empower these women," says Thusoana Ntlama of the Maseru-based Lesotho Federation of Women Lawyers. "Because right now there isn't a great understanding (among newly elected female politicians) of what local government can do."
Change in laws sought
One goal, Ntlama says, is changing Lesotho's gender laws.
At lunchtime in Maseru, professional women in suit jackets and heels walk down the street, cell phones in hand. Many are not happy about their status as "minors."
"I cannot go to the bank and ask for a loan without my husband's consent," says Manana Mashologu, a World Food Program official.
When she asked for a small overdraft on her checking account, the bank said she needed a permission slip from her husband. "This was an account with my salary," she says. "I said, 'This is crazy.' "
Mashologu says she once had a housekeeper whose husband would not allow her to get a hysterectomy. Although a coalition of human rights and women's groups has lobbied for the "Married Persons Equality Act," Lesotho's parliament has repeatedly failed to pass it. "The minute this bill passes, all the extra power that men have will go away," Ntlama says. "That is why there is resistance."
Without changing the law, she says, there is only so much women can do in the new local government, similar to village councils.
Even so, across the country and throughout southern Africa, there are women entering public life.
Manako Likhapha lives in a cold, concrete home a jolting car ride outside of Maseru. She used to be a grocery store cashier, but she was laid off in 2003. When she heard of the elections, she decided to campaign after asking her brothers for approval. Likhapha, 45, spent weeks talking to neighbors and making lists of problems to be fixed: crumbling outhouse toilets, for instance, and the ditch-filled dirt road. She didn't win but says she will run again.
Chuene also says she will bring the needs of her community to the government's attention — modern toilets, lower school fees, vegetable cooperatives, trees to stop soil erosion. Who better than women, she says, know what is really going on in the village?
"I am so thankful for all of those who put their fingers in ink to vote for me," she says, referring to the fingerprints voters place on the paper ballots. "On behalf of them, I promise to do the best I can do." |
