TO: PRINT AND ELECTRONIC MEDIA HOUSES
FROM: KGANKI MATABANE
DATE: 07 August 2020
SUBJECT: BBC Launches a Women’s Day and Month Campaign
The Black Business Council (BBC) will, on 09 August 2020, launch a campaign of a series of activities to commemorate and celebrate Women’s Day and Month. As we move towards South Africa’s Women’s Day, we plan to focus on how to “put cash in the hands of women to protect women.”
The vast majority of South Africans agree that greater participation of women in the mainstream economy and in trade boosts economic growth and has a huge potential of making the economy to be more inclusive. There is also a consensus that Gender Responsive Procurement (GRP) unlocks economic opportunities for women. We then need to find ways on how to translate this understanding into actions from government and the private sector. As such, our campaign will seek to define and then ask for concrete commitments from both government and business.
During the series of engagements, we will be seeking answers from government and business on the following:
- Do they collect data on gender and race – specifically disaggregated data on black women’s participation in procurement opportunities?
- What percentage of their budgets is allocated to black women-owned businesses?
- What is the percentage of their current procurement spend on black women-owned businesses?
- How have they integrated GRP policies and provisions in their procurement policies?
- What criteria have they developed for gender evaluation?
- What are they going to do to streamline GRP?
Let us remember the words of German playwright Bertolt Brecht, when he said “those who stay at home when the battle begins and leave others to fight for a cause must be aware: because those who did not share the fight will share the defeat.”