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Topic Discussion II
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 2
(2 of 21 pages)
Speaker: Welcome to this third session. My name is Macram West (ph), and
I will be briefly introducing our moderator today, who will then introduce the speakers. Our moderator is Marina
Ottaway, who has joined the Endowment, the Carnegie Endowment of Washington, D.C. in January 1998 to co-direct
its democracy project. She is also a professional lecturer in African studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies. She has carried out research in Africa for many years, and has taught at the University
of Addis Ababa. The University of Zambia, the American University in Cairo, and the University of Wid War der Srang
(ph) in South Africa. She has written extensively on the political evolution of southern African on the horn. Most
recently she has been working on problems of democratic transition in Africa. Dr. Ottaway is a graduate of the
University of Pavia (ph) in Italy and New York University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University.
Without further ado, I'm going to turn the floor to Miss Ottaway.
Marina Ottaway: Okay. Welcome to all of you to this third session of our meeting. Before I start introducing
the speakers, I would like to make a few points about how we are planning to conduct this meeting. First of all
let me ask those of you who have your name tent with you, to please put them on the table. That might make it easier
for us to recognize each other. You might also check to make sure that you don't have somebody else's tent in front
of you. Secondly, I'm going to try and keep the discussion focussed as much as possible on the issue of what can
be done to tackle the problems. I think that we all agree on the fact that participation is a good thing. I mean
feel free to say the contrary if you don't feel that way, but I really doubt that that is going to be the issue.
And I think what is important in meeting therefore, is not to repeat our commitment to the importance of participation,
but to try and focus and on the issue of what can be done to promote participation, but even participation of groups
that don't participate spontaneously, or need special attention also to deal with the problems that arise because
participation in society is divided along ethnical religious lines and so on.
So please let us try to focus on the solutions, and not just on the fact that participation is a good thing. I'm
going to try and keep, I'd like to ask all the speakers to keep their intervention brief so that as many people
as possible can talk and then people have a chance to come back a second time. If necessary. If I feel that if
you can keep your intervention to two or three minutes, and I will be waving a piece of paper or otherwise trying
to send you a signal if I feel that you are going, uh, uh, that you're being a bit more verbose than necessary
under the conditions.
So I'm going to try and temper democracy here with a rule of law if you want, and put down the line. Okay, without
further ado, let me introduce the participants. To my left is Ms. Gisela Haoses. I know that that is not the right
pronunciation but it's, we discussed it and I cannot click. Ms. Haoses works for a Namibian NGO (ph) called Women's
Solidarity. She is also a member of the Namibian non-governmental organizations forum and served one term as an
executive member of the council of churches of Namibia. She also act as a counselor in cases of rape and battered
women, as well as doing some marriage counseling and she's involved in programs on the education of women. I will
introduce the other speakers, just before they intervene, so you have the floor.
Gisela Haoses: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. My name is Gisela Haoses. I am actually not used to
the microphones and things, so excuse me. I will start again. I am from Namibia as already mentioned. And I'm going
to talk about participation. Democratic decision making. The vital voices of women, civil society and pluralism.
In emerging democracy, political reforms need to be complemented. Complemented by institutional reform. At independence
1990, the Namibian government was faced with the same challenge, having inherited a society that was divided on
the basis of color, admissity (ph), economy and politics. The Namibian government was faced with the difficult
task of uniting all these fragmented groups.
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