Women’s Political Representation in South Africa and Botswana

Chapter 3 of this book provided a global context to the discourse on women’s political representation and the forms of representation. To better contextualise the subject of women’s representation in Africa, this chapter provides country-specific discussion on women’s political participation, gender quotas, and the relationship between numbers and impact in Botswana and South Africa. The country-specific discussion enables the chapter interrogate the value of quotas beyond numbers in Africa. The chapter starts by providing a brief overview of the two countries, it highlights efforts taken by government and women’s movements to increase women’s political participation in these countries, and it identifies the types of quota systems in place and the effect of the quotas adopted. Specifically, it traces the history of quota adoption in the cases and how and if they have been able to engender descriptive women’s representation. The chapter evaluates the role of political parties and the electoral system in aiding the increased numeric representation of women in African politics. Based on this background, this chapter will analyse whether gender quotas have been effective in mainstreaming women in African politics. This chapter establishes a background to address the first objective of the book which is to understand the kind of relationship that exists between women’s participation in politics and the protection of women’s interests in Africa.