In commemorating Women’s Month, Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Patricia de Lille, will host a Women’s Month Land Reform Webinar.

Women are the invisible workforce, the unacknowledged backbone of the family, who play a vital role in meeting the food and nutritional needs of families through food production, economic access to food and ensuring nutrition security of family members.

Despite this bedrock role, women are constrained by poverty, lack of access to land as well as by inherent difficulties of discrimination that perpetuate gender inequalities.

The empowerment of women is crucial to provide them with the means to voice their needs and desires and to take action so that they can influence agricultural development for the improvement of nutrition and food security, and participate effectively in our society.

Minister de Lille will address the role of the State in land reform, highlight successes and engage a range of experts on the way forward and what needs to be done to empower more women under the banner of land reform.

The webinar will also enable attendees to hear from a female farmer who benefitted from government’s land reform programme.

Panelists

Minister Patricia de Lille – Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure

Professor Ruth Hall – Professor at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian

Studies – University of the Western Cape and member of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform

Advocate Bulelwa Mabasa – Director and Head of the Land Reform Restitution & Tenure practice at Werksmans Attorneys and member of the Presidential Advisory Panel on Land Reform

Christo van der Rheede –  Executive Director of AgriSA

Grace Dinkwanyane – Tafelkop farmers, winner of Female farmer of the year and beneficiary of government’s land reform/redistribution programme

Dr Dimakatso Malwela – President of Women of Value Africa and businesswomen

Source: Government of South Africa