South Africa: As the nation celebrates the legacy of one of the country’s struggle stalwarts, the late Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who today would have turned eighty-six, Free State Premier Sisi Ntombela saw it befitting to convene a female Senior Management Meeting to honour of her contribution to women struggle and the path she and many other women paved for today’s generation of women.
The meeting was held at Imvelo Safari Lodge on the outskirts of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality, Bloemfontein.
The annual meeting takes a critical look at the role of women in societal development, their appointment in various strategic leadership positions and the confidence bestowed on to lead in women empowerment programmes and structures across society.
According to the Director General of the Provincial Government, Mr Kopung Ralikontsane, the Free State continues to make steady progress in its endeavour to appoint women in strategic senior management roles and to invest in programmes that cultivate and emancipate women leadership across all strata of society.
The province seeks to achieve at least fifty percent women representation in all provincial government departments’ senior management positions.
Inspired by the spirit of the late Mama Winnie and the women of 1956, the likes of Lillian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph and many others who marched against passing laws, Premier Sisi Ntombela called upon this generation of women to locate their generation role and to ensure complete emancipation of women across society.
The Premier also emphasized the need for women to unshackle themselves from the grip of male domination and unite around a common objective, i.e. to construct a society where all are equal, free and safe. A society wherein women can feel protected, where issues of Gender-based Violence and Abuse of women and children are extinct. A society wherein women are not marginalized and discriminated against based on their gender.
