Peter Ocholla – The Caucus for women’s leadership

Because GGP is a 4 year programme, I keep telling people not to lose sight of the future because what is happening now is very short and temporary. The 2007 elections will come and go but the GGP programme is here to stay. If we keep working hard as we are doing now, the issue of whether or not we involve men should not come in because gender and governance is just what it says it is gender and governance not women alone. It defines gender to what it is ‘women and men working together exclusive or inclusive of their social roles.

2007 is here with us and we’ve got to be smart and strategize around 2007 because it is one of the eventual outcomes that we want but if you look at the broader outcomes of GGP we are talking much more than 2007 women aspirants. We are talking about attitudinal change, about psychologies that you are not going to change in a day.

Our work at the grassroot

We have trained community resource people both men and women who will then act as mobilizers or sensitizers for the female candidates. We have not discriminated in this and in fact if you look at our database of community resource people about 60-70% are men. What more would you ask than to have a man talk to other men about women issues? Let the man take the front line and be convinced that this is not a complex issue. We work on facts and precedents. We are signatories to over 6, 7 treaties internationally saying that women have a right to participate.

We are working against the backdrop of a presidential decree that says involve women in what you are doing. The civil service has been instructed by the president. He has even gone further and said that in structures of governance like CDF women should be in those committees. So women participation is nothing new it has always been there and we recognize it. Unfortunately we have bad cultural practices that what we are trying to demystify.

The first stage for us in working with aspirants was the identification. I don’t believe much in identifying the aspirants but for the aspirants to come out and say they are in it. We work with aspirants from 2 levels: there are the aspirants from parliamentary level and aspirants from the civic level. We have a unique structure here at caucus. We have what is known as Women Regional Assemblies that we use out there for the various initiatives we implement. Structures called WRA have become semi-autonomous. They are now direct links or branches of the caucus. And because they are structures formed down at the grassroots, they have strengthto reach out effectively.

We have a pool of trained people and have equipped them with toolkits, of what we are calling community resource people or community mobilizers. These resource people are the authorities and are knowledgeable on matters of governance, gender and leadership because they have been trained for that. We intend to not only use these resource people as agents but they will be trained further just before the elections. They will be trained on the election process and the election rules. The larger responsibility of these community resource people will also extend to voter education.

We are also going to focus our activities on mobilizing support through women. We hope by doing seminars in communities on the importance of giving a chance to the women it will help achieve our goals for increased women's particpation.

What feed back are you getting from the people?

I think it is very important first of all for the aspirants to believe in themselves. I think that and the immediate satisfaction of what we are doing is that these women can come up and be positive regardless of what the society has upheld and what is happening out is good. It could be very diminishing if we remain or go backwards from the number that we currently have in representation in parliament. We are saying that we want to see an average goal of GGP attained lets say about 30% because the ultimate is 50%.

Reports from the resource people is that we have very strong support for women who have taken development roles in the communities.

What do you think you can do personally to help in the increase of the women who are going to parliament?

When we talk about women leadership I think I first have to believe it myself. We talk about a fair chance and a fair chance for all. And given a fair chance, I think a woman can do as much as a man can do. However, a million of other men need to be convinced of this situation.They say a journey of a thousand miles begins somewhere. If I talk about this to my friends after work, and in my home I can help change these perceptions.

Women cannot be left behind

I also think the effort comes from both men and women. Women too have to believe in themselves that they can do it. You will find a lot of times that it is actually the women who do not vote for women. They say they can’t vote for a woman because ‘yule ni mwanamke tu kama mimi’ (that’s just a woman like me)

Finally, People call it gender war but it’s not really a war in fact when we become confrontational in those terms then the results are not going to be what we wanted them to be. It’s up to men and women to finally agree and work together.We just have to be more participatory in our approaches For example GGP is a 4 year programme but I think we should look at 2012 to get results for what we are doing. The fact that women have come up and the fact that they say that they can do it and the men are willing and listen to them and to support them, the fact that political parties have been forced to come up with policy framework to encompass women, shows promise.

Let us take advantage of the wave of what is happening around us and not loose this chance.