Hon Mosimane, gender equality is relegated to the backburner by all the political parties. You then imply that the application of the 50%/50% principle in the political parties ... [Interjections.]
Hon Lamoela, the Bill empowers the Minister to designate bodies and to recommend what steps should be taken to better enable women's empowerment and gender equality. Predictably, the DA is opposed to the powers given to the Minister - this from the same DA that went around publicly claiming that the Bill did not give the Minister any power to intervene to enhance the realisation of the goal of gender equality. Now they say that the discretion afforded to the Minister to designate bodies and to recommend what steps to take is too wide.
What we are dealing with here is a party that knows that it has opposed significant legislation that is aimed at improving women's lives. They know that they have no chance to designate a Minister because they will be walloped on 7 May 2014.
This pattern from the DA is all too familiar. They first rejected the Bill in our committee on the basis that it lacked provision for enforcement. However, when the ANC and the other reasonable and patriotic opposition parties addressed this genuine concern, the DA then changed its tune and said that the sanctions in the Bill were too harsh and a Bill of this nature should rather incentivise behaviour in order to facilitate compliance. What utter rubbish!
We know why the DA is opposed to this Bill. This Bill touches the interests of big capital by enforcing compliance for women's empowerment and gender equality. [Interjections.] The DA opposes for the sake of opposing. [Interjections.]