Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for this opportunity. My name is Lonhlanhla Mthethwa from Swaziland, and I’m just going to elaborate a little bit about my country. Swaziland, it’s a patriarchal country. It’s a landlocked country between Mozambique and South Africa, and its population, it’s about more than 1.2 million people, and the majority are women. As Lungi said, we are visible, we are in the forefront. For us, it’s how the Rural Women was formed. It was formed in 2010, and it was launched in 2011, on the 8th of March, during the International Women’s Day. It exists in the four geographical regions of the country. We have got more than 89 community-based organisations where women organise themselves on different issues, and they meet on a monthly basis. Some meet twice a month, where they also share ideas and their struggles, and also issues of gender-based violence, and also how best can they collectively achieve or eliminate gender-based violence in their communities.
As I’ve said, Swaziland is a patriarchal country. “Patriarchy in the country is depriving the rights of women to access to land, especially because most of the chiefs in the communities are men.” We don’t have a chief who is a woman in the country. In the 59 constituencies, over 600 chiefdoms. Due to patriarchy, land access and control and ownership in Swaziland is still a problem, especially in the rural areas. Only in the urban areas where there is a tightly-gated land, where women can access land. It was through the lobby of Mama Dua Pani, who stood up and wanted also to register their property as equal share.
Some were due to the land, not accessing land. Some of the cultural norms and beliefs that were there during the 60s and the 50s, where a groom, when going to the brides, a newlyweds would be allocated land, because that bride, when coming to the groom, would be given seeds, and there would be also a hoe, which was also a lobbying tool or a lobbying norm, that automatically, a day bride should be allocated land.
Coming to the issue of seeds, in the country, we don’t have a traditional seed policy. It’s only the hybrid seeds that we have. “Still, we don’t have a traditional seed policy, which will protect women, as women in the continent of Africa have been custodians of seed for decades.” But through the challenges of patriarchy and not accessing land and control, they are still striving to save their seeds and also striving to have their seeds being protected and also having a policy.
Climate change, it’s also another global phenomenon, which is affecting the continent of Africa. And also, Swaziland is one of the countries which is also highly impacted by climate change, as we don’t have information at the right time, especially the early warning systems, while the women themselves do have the traditional information, which is always ignored. That during the traditional knowledge of the early warning systems is in place, the women, they know through the beds and through also how the wetland will be shaped when there’ll be a lot of rain.
In conclusion, women are still resisting with dignity, saving their own indigenous seeds, lobbying and advocating for land ownership at community level. As I’ve elaborated in the first time that women in Swaziland are organising themselves into groups where they discuss their own issues in their respective communities, and they also come with their own solutions, how they take that issue forward. They are still striving to participate in leading positions, regardless of all the challenges that the women face in the country, challenges of climate change, challenges of financial resources. But we see women who are standing up, taking leading positions at community level, being a school committee, constituency community developer, which we normally call Bukopo. Women have rich indigenous knowledge on seeds, climate change, and also how to prepare their own different dishes, and also agroecology. It’s also what women still strive to implement in their own repressive countries.
Traditional food that is both nutritious and also medicinal, it’s still what these women still strive and also to document. Thank you. Thank you.
