National Council on Gender Based Violence; Responses to questions on the Department's Budget Vote

Meeting report

Chairperson’s opening remarks
The Chairperson opened the meeting by stating that because the delegates from the Department of Women Children and People with Disabilities (DWCPD) were late, the Select Committee would not be able to hear and question everything in its entirety. The Chairperson acknowledged the presence of the Deputy Minister, Ms Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu, and set out the purpose of the meeting. The Department was to brief the Select Committee on the problem of gender-based violence in South Africa and then respond to questions which had been posed previously by the Committee on the budget vote.

DWCPD presentation on the National Council for Gender-Based Violence

Ms Veliswa Baduza. Director General of the DWCPD, explained that her Department had unfortunately received the wrong venue number for the meeting, and as a result they could not be on time. Ms Baduza then went straight into in South Africa. The aim of her presentation on the National Council for Gender-Based Violence was to inform Committee Members on the structure being developed by the Department.   The Council had been created in 2011 to help alleviate gender-based violence. Cabinet had approved the recommendation to establish the National Council on 5 December 2011 and it was subsequently inaugurated on 10 December 2012.

In December 2012 the Minister of Women Children and People with Disabilities had launched three meetings at which an executive committee had been nominated to provide strategic guidance and effectively govern how the National Council would be structured. This structure, according to the Director General, would then be ratified by a Secretariat within the Department who would act as an overseer and also ensure that all outstanding documents of the Council were finalized for adoption by members.

The Executive Committee had been mandated to carry out various tasks in creating the National Council. This included a vision, and various objectives that would illustrate the purpose of the Council and the roles and responsibilities of its various committees. The Executive Committee would also structure the office of the CEO of the National Council and the Secretariat, and mandate their specific roles and responsibilities. Moreover, it had a responsibility to create the procedural guidelines for the National Council and all the funding proposals for the work of the Council.

The Executive Committee had drafted a programme for the National Council that had identified five actions that would be essential in the fight against Gender-Based Violence. These five pillars were Prevention, Support, Response, Research (which included monitoring and evaluation) and Communication.

Ms Baduza emphasised that the National Council’s Gender-Based Violence campaign aimed to integrate, strengthen and mobilise structures in society for the reduction of gender-based violence through the implementation of coherent strategies. 

The objectives of the National Council were firstly to provide political and strategic guidance to address gender-based violence. The second aim was to strengthen coherence of strategies that were present throughout government and civil societies, and the third was to bring together a multi-sectorial approach to gender-based violence. The Department’s head council would coordinate, monitor and evaluate the Executive on all gender-based violence interventions. Lastly, the National Council would endeavour to mobilise resources for the optimal achievement of the mandate of the National Council and the National Plan.

Ms Baduza explained the need for an extended plenary within the National Council that would be chaired by the Deputy President. This plenary would provide political leadership and guidance and work in conjunction with a national board. The plenary and board would work on already existing programmes that challenged gender-based violence. There would be a strong need for resource mobilization at the national, provincial and local level.  There would also be a Programme Implementation and Review Committee that would work as an oversight body with the National Council.

The Director General indicated that the National Council would be constituted by all government departments, Chapter Nine institutions and civil society organizations. The one most important issue was that the National Council aimed to address gender-based violence through equal partnership with all citizens of South Africa. The National Council would incorporate not only the women and children sectors, but would look to have men, the youth, the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) community, and even further  -- traditional healers, traditional leaders, organised labour and regulatory bodies involved in the fight against gender-based violence.

Ms Baduza then went on to present the recommendations and adoptions that would be presented on Tuesday 11 June at a plenary hearing with the Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities. These recommendations would emphasise the creation of the National Council’s Gender-Based Violence Extended Plenary and a separate Regular Plenary. The structure of the Extended Plenary would include a chairperson (the Deputy President), a deputy chairperson (a member of civil society), Ministers, Premiers, and leaders of civil society sectors.  It was suggested that the plenary meet once a year.

The Regular Plenary would discuss gender-based violence and would be structured similarly to the Extended Plenary.  However, the chairperson would be a Minister elected by the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC). The deputy chairperson would be a member of civil society and there would be leadership from various sectors of the South African government. The purpose of the Regular Plenary, when instituted, would be to provide leadership and strategic direction in the execution policies and programmes. This plenary would meet three to four times a year.

Ms Baduza then presented an organogram of the Secretariat. The Executive Committee would recommend on 11 June that a board be established within the National Council that would be a stand-alone entity. The secretariat would be led by a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a Chief Financial Officer (CFO). A Directorate would also be present to work with the Secretariat to ensure the programmes created would be effective. Resource mobilization (particularly raising resources) would be the main priority of the CFO.

The last chapter of the presentation looked at the priorities that had been identified by the Executive Committee for the coming financial year.  These were approval of the proposed structure of the National Council, the facilitation by the National Council of the establishment of the Secretariat and the board of trustees, the development of the national strategic plan on gender-based violence, and lastly the development of a national monitoring tool that would isolate hotspots where gender-based violence was prevalent.

The budget created by the Executive committee was then presented by Ms Baduza. The Executive had estimated that the Department would need R4 million for the national Vikela Campaign. The Department would also need an estimated R7.5 million for the development and implementation of the national strategic plan for five years. This figure, however, excluded the cost of monitoring and evaluating hotspots in South Africa.  Lastly, the department would require R1.5 million for strategic planning meetings. The estimated total that was required by the Department for its Gender-Based Violence campaigns was R20.7 million. It was important to note that the Department would be receiving $1 million from the British government in support of gender-based violence programmes.

Discussion
Mr D Worth (DA, Free State) asked why the department did not include an amount for monitoring tools for hotspots in the budget. Why did the R7.5 million figure not include the monitoring requirements?

Ms Baduza responded by explaining that the Executive had yet to go through the process of estimating a price for the monitoring tools. The Executive would provide a quote during the 11 June plenary meeting.

The Chairperson questioned the readiness of the programme, and asked whether a date had been set when the programme would be ready for implementation. Had the Department included key role players in this planning process, such as local government members?  Would the budget include them specifically in this process?  Lastly, when the programmes were rolled out, would it be at a national, provincial and local level? 

Ms Baduza responded that planning was at a national level. The plans and budgets were aimed at a national level for approval. This process would be cascaded down to a provincial and local level. For the provincial level specifically, the Department would be sourcing funding from international developmental funders, and from the National Treasury. For provinces at the moment, it was an unfunded mandate and therefore provincial departments would have to lobby for resources for provincial programmes. As it stood now, the provincial and local departments had yet to budget for these programmes.

The Chairperson commented that she was particularly concerned that if the provincial and local departments were not included in this process -- or more importantly, if the programmes were rolled out only in certain provinces and not in the provinces or local sectors where they were needed desperately -- it meant that the department had failed in its mandate. She challenged the Director General to rework this proposal to include and accommodate provincial and local decision-makers and departments. She also questioned whether there had been any public participation in the planning process of the National Council. The public needed to approve this programme, and getting the public to be involved was a component in this process.

DWCPD response to the Budget Vote

The Chairperson asked the Department to continue with the second part of the presentation, which was the response to the questions posed previously by Members of the Committee on the budget vote. She acknowledged that the questions had been drafted a week previously by the Committee and had been combined by the various Members for brevity’s sake.  There was therefore no specific person that could be isolated and identified as the one who had posed the question.  

The first question put forward was why there was no mention of adults with disabilities in the foreword of their previous document, entitled the Strategic Plan. Moreover, the Committee wanted the department to describe some key interventions targeting this group.

Ms Baduza responded that adults with disabilities were mentioned in the Deputy Minister’s statement. This group faced, and continued to face, challenges such as unemployment, inequality, limited developmental opportunities, poverty and HIV/AIDS.  Societal attitudes and a lack of knowledge by some employers also exacerbated these challenges. The Department, through its advocacy and institutional support, conducted “awareness raising” campaigns to highlight these challenges and also provided educational campaigns that would contribute towards changing mind-sets.

The next question asked what programmes, activities or projects were aimed at achieving the goal of promoting responsiveness of the New Growth Plan Framework and the Jobs Fund to women and children.

Ms Baduza responded that the Department, in partnership with the World Bank, had compiled the report to engender the New Growth Path. This could be achieved through the 2013/2014 key performance index on programmes for socio-economic opportunities and the development of rural women.

The next question revolved around the official sign-off page of the strategic plan.  Many of the positions within the Department were filled with acting representatives. When would these positions be made permanent, and how many had been made permanent by May 2013? The Committee especially wanted to know the names of the members who had been made permanent.

Ms Baduza stated that two of the three posts had been filled permanently. These two positions were the Director General’s position (Ms Baduza) and the Chief Financial Officer, Ms Camgwini Ntshinga.

The next question related to the foreword of the document that had been provided to the Committee previously. This foreword had a number of duplicated paragraphs and needed to be edited to provide details of activities and goals.

Ms Baduza apologized for the error and lack of attention paid to the document. It was an error that had apparently been made at the printers used by the Department.

The subsequent question posed by the Committee asked that the document previously provided to the Committee as the “Strategic Plan”, be copied and all agreements made by the Minister of the Department with the President within the document, should be made available. 

Ms Baduza admitted that all agreements made by the Minister were included on Annexure A in the Strategic Plan, specifically on page 55.  She emphasised that all agreements would additionally have the results and projections that were promised by the Minister and the President so that the Committee Members could see whether promises made between the Minister and the President were clear and coherent, and that results showed that the agreements had been met.

The next question revolved around the notes made in the strategic plan, and specifically around the last financial year. The Department faced various challenges as a result of funding challenges. The Committee wanted to know how the Department would address this problem.

According to Ms Baduza the Department was engaging with the National Treasury on the problem of funding. She underlined the need for a further process of defining the department’s Service Delivery Model and that business cases needed to be initiated to determine the actual structure that the Department required to deliver on its mandate. The funding shortage would be specifically addressed through the MTEF process. The Department had also secured funding from the United Nations Development Programme, though the amount was not clear and was not provided at this committee meeting.

The Committee Members then asked why the Department had a budget of R16 million for travel, where not even the children’s rights programme had been allocated such an extravagant amount. The Committee wanted to know how the department could justify such extravagance.

Ms Baduza reminded the Committee that this figure was the budget for the entire Department, constituting of all four programmes and including the Ministry itself. The main driving force that exacerbated the travelling budget was the commitment made by the Ministry for obligatory international travel.

In terms of the turnaround strategy, the Committee wanted to know whether the turnaround strategy would be affected by the budgetary constraints that were affecting the Department.

Ms Baduza did not address this question.  However, the documents she provided stated that the Department would fail to deliver on all the planned activities within the agreed time frames, due to the lack of resources. The Department, according to the document, would endeavour to engage in discussions with a number of stakeholders to solicit support.

In the previous meeting there had been figures and percentages that illustrated that within the Department certain posts were vacant, yet they were still funded. The Committee wanted to know which posts remained vacant but were funded, and which key posts remained vacant but were unfunded. Moreover the Committee wanted to know what funding was required to fill key positions. 

The Director General listed four positions that remained vacant but were funded.  These were the Chief Director posts for legal services, for resource management, for advocacy and mainstreaming (Rights of People with Disabilities) and strategic management. There were two positions that were vacant but were unfunded. These positions were the Chief Director for Institutional Support and Capacity Building for Rights of People with Disabilities (LEVEL 14) and a Chief Director for Institutional Support and Capacity Building for Children’s Rights (Level 14).

The Director General went on to elaborate that even though there were vacancies which vitally needed to be filled, there were no resources to ensure this. This was one of the major faults of the previous structure within the Department, when the positions had been created.

For the next ten minutes of the meeting, the Director General tried to address the questions posed by the Committee.  However, she could not adequately answer them owing to the fact that the document she had was incorrect and had errors in it.

The Chairperson challenged Ms Baduza and reiterated that due to the fact that the meeting had begun late and the document was incorrect and of sub-par standard, she would like to close the meeting and ask the delegates to return when they were better prepared. She would register this with the Chief Whip, as she believed that the Department was not adhering to the policies and procedures that the Committee required, that being adherence to time and providing a legible document. The fact that the Department had come to the Select Committee meeting twice with documents that were illegible made the situation worse.

The meeting was adjourned.