Government to ensure women own land – Ramaphosa

Government will set aside forty percent of its procurement to businesses that are owned by women, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced today.

Ramaphosa, delivering his message for Women’s Day, said national departments were expected to monitor and report on how women have participated in each public procurement process in the next 12 months.

The president said as chairperson of the African Union, he would also be working on policy guidelines to help members states to develop the same interventions.
Ramaphosa virtually delivered the message on the 64th anniversary of the march by women to the Union Buildings in 1956, protesting legislation aimed at tightening the apartheid government’s control over movement of black women in urban areas.
He said government would engage with the financial sector to open access to services for women.

“Of the R75 million in COVID-19 relief earmarked for farming input vouchers, 53% of the beneficiaries will be rural women. We will ensure that our own land reform process favours all historically disadvantaged people – including women – in getting land and the means to farm it,” he said.

Ramaphosa said he would be calling for AU member states to put polices in place to increase women’s ownership of land to 30%.
South Africa was in the grip of two pandemics, Coronavirus and gender-based violence, Ramaphosa said, adding that ever more women and children were being abused and losing their lives at the hands by men.

“It cannot be that this Women’s Day is drenched in the tears of families who have lost their sisters, daughters and mothers to violence perpetrated by men. This cannot continue,” he said.

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