Has the nation failed women or is it the women who have failed themselves? A post-mortem of the recent Eswatini national elections

Statistics from the voters’ role for the recent national elections at Eswatini indicate that more women than men had registered. The Press Reader of July 25, 2018 accordingly remarked that women were dominating the voter registration role. Taken at face value, this signalled that, as part of the electorate, women stood to make their voice heard through the ballot.  Sadly, as I write this brief election review; that was not to be.

When nominations came, men took the stage with women following in comparatively negligible numbers. From a gender perspective, that was an early disquieting moment in the election race.  On 20 September 2018 – the eve of the final elections, Ncane Maziya of Gender Links poignantly reported that a mere 14% of women were in the race.  By then, it was pretty obvious that the hoped-for women’s representation in parliament was a far-fetched dream.  As it turned out, we are stared in the face by the same old story of gender disparity in a post-election context where once again men are poised to be sworn-in in droves into our 11^th parliament.

And so I ask: Has the nation failed women or is it the women who have failed themselves?  This question is not rhetorical.  It seriously probes the validity of our formal claims to being an inclusive society with a special commitment to gender equality.  It further wants to call for a serious self-reflection of the nation and women in particular, pertaining this chronic failure to achieve the stipulated SADC quota of women in national parliaments.   

Is it now time to face it and admit that any claim to be an equal society is as false as claiming the sun rises in the west?  The election results speak for themselves – 57 male MPs in-waiting against 2 females.  No amount of denial can controvert what these figures indicate about the deeply entrenched patriarchy in this country.  It’s simply a cliché of an observation that needs no appeal to any authoritative feminist view.  

But then again, when I say women have to introspect on this I am not unaware of the fact that women in any society, Eswatini included, are not a homogeneous social group.  In this instance, I would hazard to say that it is women who have any political consciousness who need to do this.  Frankly, I do not believe grassroots women in this country who likely constitute the majority of the female electorate think twice about voting for a man.  Does anybody think differently from me? I’m ready to listen.

 In the meantime, let me declare my vested interest: I have a dream. I have a dream that this nation will turn the political rhetoric of social inclusion into a living tradition. I have a dream that as a society, we will outgrow the tokenism of “vote for a woman” campaigns and other tokenisms that reduce constitutional equality into a first-order Marxian “false consciousness”. I have a dream that one day I’ll be a father to girls who will fully enjoy growing up in a society where they will fully participation in the political life of this nation.  And so, I am not about to rest my case – trust me.