President appoints Mx Busisiwe Deyi from the University of Pretoria as a Commissioner for Gender Equality

Posted on August 02, 2019

 

The Faculty of Law at the University of Pretoria expresses hearty congratulations to Mx Busisiwe Deyi in its Department of Jurisprudence  who has been appointed officially by President Cyril Ramaphosa to serve on the Commission for Gender Equality in a part-time position until 2024.  President Ramaphosa has officially appointed nine Commissioners to the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE), the Presidency revealed on 1 August 2019.

In response to her appointment, Deyi says that her ‘role is to help the CGE to make critical interventions around oppressive gender systems which maldistribute and limit life chances for the LGBTI communities. Our limited understanding of the ways in which gender norms are used to exclude and marginalise gender non-conforming communities creates an unequal access to health, education and other socio-economic benefits LGBTI persons should have access to.’

According to Deyi, ‘there exists networks of inequality which produce and push certain populations towards harm. Trans* women are still turned away from homeless shelters, Home Affairs is still effectively denying trans* persons access to identity documents. The distribution of harm is still determined along systems of racism, sexism and ableism i.e. lack of access to reproductive justice for Black womxn puts them in positions of vulnerability and perpetuates inequality. It is important we identify the ways in which women and gender non-conforming persons are constantly being pushed towards the margins and exposed to insecurity.

Deyi further states that ‘[T]he Commission should concentrate on pushing the relevant stakeholders to act in intentional and productive ways to undo the systemic and structural marginalisation of women through ensuring that it asks for material redress. We [as I share this responsibility] should be much more vocal about the ways in which violence against womxn and gender non-conforming persons (particularly trans* women and intersex persons) is perpetrated through the lack of socio-economic services that cater to their needs. South Africa still partakes in intersex genital mutilation in state hospitals and the government has been slow to take decisive actions against this human rights violation. South Africa is yet to remove (or recognise) a gender non-conforming gender marker in our identity documents. We need to make sure that decisive action is taken in this regard.’

Well wishes to Mx Deyi on this significant appointment and their role in future equality development and progress in South Africa.

Deyi joined the Faculty of Law on 1 May as a lecturer in the Department of Jurisprudence.

 

- Author Elzet Hurter

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