Kate Jowell blazed trail for women

THE late South African legendary poet Don Mattera’s book Memory is the Weapon has a haunting poignancy. Memory is one of the invaluable human assets that gives one a sense of self and identity. Memory is the only weapon in our armoury to recapture the past.

I have observed we are a stressed nation that is forever in the present. Our national memory has been struck by Alzheimer’s.

The disease was discovered by German neurologist Alois Alzheimer in Frankfurt in 1905. As we celebrate Women’s Month, how many people remember the trail blazer of labour relations and human rights in South Africa, Kate Jowell?

She was an editor of Fairlady magazine and the first female to head a business school in South Africa. On February 1, 1993, she was appointed director at the business school at the University of Cape Town.

Jowell was a woman who would not baulk at the idea of procedural justice in South Africa. She shattered the proverbial glass ceiling, with determination, steely resolve, poise and dignity in a male-oriented environment.

Jowell was an industrial relations pioneer in the country. She influenced the apartheid government to level the playing field for the collective good of economic progress.

One of the key labour laws of the apartheid era, the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1956, excluded blacks from its definition of an employee. The other oppressive act was the Bantu Labour Settlement of Dispute Act of 1953, which had provided for limited communication channels between blacks and their employers.

She fought doubly hard to normalise industrial relations. She was part of the Wiehahn Commission, under the chairmanship of Professor Nick Wiehahn, to convince Parliament in 1979 to extend labour legislation to African workers. President Cyril Ramaphosa, whom she met when he was engrossed with the National Union of Mine Workers, made an indelible impression on her.

It is notable the apartheid government had a chauvinistic attitude and Jowell used her emotional intelligence to tackle the issue when she served on the National Manpower Commission. At the time, women were not allowed to work overtime and at night in South Africa. Had it not been her influence, what would have happened to female train drivers at Prasa and Transnet today? Married women were jointly taxed with their husbands. Simply put, married couples were not taxed as separate individuals.

In 1983, then-minister of manpower Fanie Botha removed the long ban on women working overtime and at night. In 1994, Jowell was part of the Commission of Inquiry into the Tax Structure of South Africa, also known as the Margo Commission. It was chaired by Cecil Margo. Jowell recommended the Australian system, which taxed people as separate individuals, should be considered in South Africa.

She urged women to organise themselves on a large scale if they wanted to succeed in changing the joint taxation system.

Jowell’s biographer Sharon Sorour-Morris said: “She refused to lambaste men simply for the sake of doing so. She recognised and acknowledged their strengths, especially when it came to their abilities to succeed.”

Jowell played an important role towards the emancipation of women in particular and black people in general. Unfortunately, she succumbed to the Alzheimer’s disease in 2013. She served South Africa with all her heart.