KENYA: Going Beyond “Cheerleading, Singing and Dancing For Candidates”

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Feb 23 2007 (IPS) - With general elections scheduled to take place in Kenya this December, activists in the East African country are looking to constitutional reform to ensure that more women fill decision-making posts in government.

Eighteen of Kenya’s 222 legislators are women. While this is the highest number ever, it still amounts to less than 10 percent of the total.

Newly-formed lobby group Muungano wa Katiba Mpya (Union for a New Constitution, in Swahili) believes the number of parliamentary seats to which legislators are nominated rather than elected should be increased from 12 to 36 – with 24 of these reserved for women. The appeal is one of ten constitutional reforms that the body is demanding be implemented before voters go to the polls.

Some have pointed out that the union’s appeal doesn’t go far enough in ensuring that Kenya has 30 percent of key government posts occupied by women. As concerns parliament, the target of 30 percent is viewed by many as being the minimum percentage of seats needed for women to have an effect in the legislature.

But, Njoki Ndung’u, a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Administration of Justice and Legal Affairs, says the reform would still be a valuable stepping stone to greater gender equality.

“This is just the number of those nominated. If you add this to the number of women elected, you will definitely get a higher figure than what we have currently in parliament,” she told IPS.

The committee forms part of Muungano wa Katiba Mpya, along with political parties and civil society groups. It has already tabled a report to parliament with a draft constitutional amendment bill that would put reforms in place.

Debate on the bill is expected to start when parliament reconvenes next month, Ndung’u said. Previous attempts to push through affirmative action legislation for women in Kenya have foundered.

Other activists are calling for a third of the posts to which people are appointed and elected in Kenya to be reserved for women.

“Women from all political divides should fight for the passing of an affirmative action principle in the current constitution…They should seek to bring a stand-alone constitutional amendment for affirmative action into the current constitution,” said Ann Njogu, executive director of the Centre for Rights, Education and Awareness, a women’s rights organisation based in Nairobi.

She was speaking at a meeting held last week in the capital, Nairobi. The event brought together women parliamentarians and leaders of women’s organisations to chart ways of creating awareness about the need for affirmative action – something that has already taken root elsewhere in the region.

Uganda and Tanzania have increased women’s representation in their parliaments to 24 and 15 percent respectively, using constitutional provisions for affirmative action.

Both are eclipsed by Rwanda, however, which has women in almost 49 percent of legislative posts. A constitutionally-determined quota in this country reserves 30 percent of seats in both the lower and upper houses of parliament for women.

For Irene Oloo, executive director of the League of Kenya Women Voters, affirmative action is just one of the options for deepening women’s participation in politics.

“It is a way of acknowledging a false start in the political game, which has in the past been a preserve of men; it is a way of correcting past injustices where women have been marginalised in the political arena. But it is not the only way of getting women involved in politics.”

With or without constitutional quotas, women may still face hostility on the campaign trail.

The ‘Gender Monitoring Report of 2002 General Elections in Kenya’, published in 2003 by the Africa Woman and Child Feature Service (AWCIN), a Nairobi-based media and development organisation, noted that women who contested legislative seats in the last general election were ridiculed and intimidated.

They also became the targets of physical violence, as Monica Amolo can attest. Attempting to win a seat in western Kenya in 2002, she endured death threats, insults and abuse at the hands of her opponent, who eventually got elected.

“He has repeatedly told me that a woman’s place is in the kitchen, and continues to call me all sorts of names, from a prostitute to a home breaker – just because I am vying for the same seat with him,” noted Amolo, who plans to make another bid for the constituency this year.

In such an electoral climate, says the AWCIN report, “…women participating in the campaign trail were mostly limited to cheerleading, singing and dancing for candidates.”

The ‘Political Parties Bill’, tabled in parliament last year, would seek to eliminate election-related abuse by deregistering political parties that engage in or tolerate hate speech, violence or incitement to violence. The bill would also empower the Election Commission of Kenya to bar candidates engaging in violence from contesting the poll.

Debate on the bill is expected to begin next month when parliament re-opens.