Note to editors: The following speech was delivered today by BOSA Deputy Leader, Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster MP, during the P20 Women’s Parliament debate.
As Build One SA, we welcome the opportunity to address this P20 Women’s Parliament and to be part of the rich engagement we have shared over these two days.
The objectives before us, to advance women’s entrepreneurship, strengthen financial inclusion, and secure women’s place at the centre of our economy, are urgent and achievable if we act together.
I do not know a more hard-working group than the Black woman, yet thirty-one years into our democracy, she is still the face of poverty in South Africa.
She is the street vendor stretching a few rands to feed her family; the domestic worker supporting households not her own.
She is the small business owner who cannot access the capital she needs to grow. It is not for lack of hard work that she remains the face of poverty.
That is why we welcome the proposal raised here for the creation of a Women’s Development Agency, a dedicated institution with the clear mandate to fund, support, and mentor women entrepreneurs.
We have seen in countries like Rwanda and Malaysia that such agencies can significantly increase women’s participation in the economy. In South Africa, this could be the game-changer we need to unlock women’s economic potential on a national scale.
At BOSA, we also believe that pay equity is inseparable from economic inclusion. Our Fair Pay Bill seeks to ban discriminatory hiring based on past pay, enforce salary transparency, and require companies to account for gender pay gaps.
These measures ensure that women’s work is valued equally and fairly.
For this P20 Women’s Parliament to have been meaningful, beyond a talk shop we must:
- Remove systemic barriers, from banking biases to corporate procurement gatekeeping.
- Reform access to finance, treating women as a return, not a risk.
- Invest where women trade and live, in townships, rural markets, and informal hubs.
- Hold all mandated institutions accountable, with transparent, measurable reporting.
Colleagues, this is a moment that demands more than agreement, it calls for decisive action. Like the women of 1956, we must recognise the urgency of now.
Let us leave this gathering committed to turning proposals into policies, and policies into measurable change.
And let us be united in the vision that one day soon South Africa will have a woman leading this nation.
That will require us, across parties and sectors, to recognise excellence when we see it, and to rally around it, whether quietly or loudly, visibly or behind the scenes. Because we will only get this right as a collective.
Media Enquiries:
Roger Solomons – BOSA Spokesperson – 072 299 3551