Message 53: Hillary M Masundire

I am thinking of the current setting in rural peoples of southern Africa. Most of them, if they are in agriculture, practise subsistence farming. Crop production is primarily dependent on rainfall. There are a number of small-scale irrigation schemes, e.g. in Zimbabwe where women and children tend to do more work than the few men who live on and in those schemes. In South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, most of the irrigated agriculture is medium to large scale schemes that are quite capital intensive. Ownership of such schemes does not seem to be gender influenced (although most commercial farmers are men).

Water management decisions are made in male-dominated fora but I do not see this as a deliberate marginalisation of women. I cannot see how women may have been disadvantaged by water resources developments have made by men. In cases where public consultations have been made prior to water development projects, increasingly women have formed part of the consulted public and some of them have expressed the view that " this is for men to decide". This could well be due to the people's culture, that there are certain domains of life that men play a leading role and others that women play a leading role.

I hope that women from Southern Africa comment on this - from a woman's perspective.

Hillary M Masundire

University of Botswana