AL JAMA-AH honours International Women’s Day:

A year of decisive action to advance women’s rights in South Africa, Africa, and the world.

Today, March 08th 2023 marks International Women’s Day. Al Jama-ah Party joins the rest of the world in commemorating this significant day to reflect on the challenges faced by millions of women all over the world.

Delivering his debate to Parliament on Tuesday March 07th 2023 on International Women’s Day under the theme, “A year of decisive action to advance women’s rights in South Africa, Africa and the world”, Hon Ganief Hendricks, Al Jama-ah’s leader and Member of Parliament, paid tribute to all women.

All our women have multiple roles in our communities; while each one of them performs, inter alia, the role of wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, caregiver, administrator, director, disburser, economist, disciplinarian, teacher, and even as a health officer, it is beyond question that she is indeed the queen in and outside her house. Apart from all of these essential roles, women play a key role in society’s socio-economic development.

Hence a saying by Prophet Muhammad (s): “The condition of a society depends on the consciousness of its women.” Women’s leadership is vital to peacebuilding, social integration, and driving prosperity to not only advance gender equality and secure the women empowerment in our time, but they also collectively bring about social cohesion within society.

So, if we continue to mishandle women in our homes, in the workplaces, in public spaces, we are not only depriving her of fulfilling her role in society, but we harm ourselves as societies or as nation- states. The crime statistics of July 2022 until September 2022 revealed almost one thousand women were murdered in gender-based violence cases. The question that we should ask is: why are our women being murdered when they basically seeking their rights for maintenance for both their children and for themselves?

Considering these negative happenings, we beseech our government to speed up the amendments to the Maintenance Act; an Act that has been discriminating against our women for years. We too plea with government to eliminate the basic challenges that our women experience when processing claims for maintenance.

Another Act that has harmed and continue to harm the dignity of our Muslim women is the fact that up until today their marriages, which have been performed according to Islamic rites, have not been recognised by our democratically elected government; it is a known fact that such non-recognition places many hardships on our women as well as our children in Muslim marriages.