SEDIBENG.- The Ministry of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities was established to embody the state’s commitment to equality, empowerment and protection of vulnerable groups.

Yet its own portfolio committee exposes a deep contradiction, the body charged with oversight is itself structurally misrepresentative. With only one male member and only one disabled person, the committee perpetuates exclusion rather than dismantling it. A ministry that leads the fight against gender-based violence cannot credibly do so while its oversight committee reflects gender imbalance.

Likewise, a ministry that claims to champion disability rights cannot marginalize disabled voices within its own structures.

Oversight is not ceremonial, it is the lifeblood of accountability. Committees are meant to interrogate policy, scrutinize budgets and ensure implementation. But without genuine gender balance and disability inclusion, this committee cannot fulfill its constitutional role. The absence of diverse voices explains why presidential working groups on youth and disability exist outside the committee’s framework.

These parallel structures are not signs of innovation but symptoms of failure, they exist because the committee has not integrated the constituencies it was designed to represent.

Structural reform is therefore urgent. The ministry requires two deputy ministers to ensure its mandate is not diluted. One deputy minister should focus exclusively on disability issues, recognizing that disability intersects with both gender and youth.

Disability is not a silo, it is a cross-cutting reality that demands dedicated leadership.

By elevating disability to a deputy ministerial portfolio, the ministry would acknowledge its complexity and ensure that policy responses are not superficial.

Equally, the ministry’s name must be reimagined. “Ministry of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities” is cumbersome and inadvertently reinforces separation.

A more coherent title, Ministry of Gender, Youth and Disability, would reflect the interconnectedness of these struggles. Gender encompasses women and men, youth represents generational equity and disability cuts across both.

This renaming would signal a shift from tokenistic representation to substantive inclusion, aligning the ministry’s identity with its mission.

But renaming alone is insufficient. The ministry must be policy-orientated, focusing on formulation and implementation rather than symbolic gestures. A policy-driven ministry would ensure that gender-based violence is tackled through systemic reforms, that youth empowerment is embedded in economic planning and that disability inclusion is mainstreamed across all sectors. It would move beyond advocacy into the realm of enforceable change, ensuring that equality is not aspirational but operational.

In its current form, the ministry risks becoming a symbolic institution, visible but ineffective. With structural reform, balanced representation and a sharper policy focus, it can become a constitutional engine for justice. The restructured ministry would not only embody the principles of equality and inclusion but also operationalize them, making them unavoidable for politicians, policymakers and society at large.
This is not merely an administrative adjustment, it is a constitutional imperative.

A ministry that claims to represent women, youth and persons with disabilities must itself be representative. Anything less is hypocrisy.

By rebalancing its committee, appointing two deputy ministers, renaming itself to reflect interconnected struggles and orienting itself towards policy formulation and implementation, the ministry can finally fulfill its promise, to be the institutional guardian of equality, inclusion and justice.

• Lucky Tumahole is a Disability Advocate and Political Writer