MEDIA reports that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has lamented the lack of progress in the empowerment of women are encouraging.

She reportedly said it was time the government admitted that it has failed women.

Truth is that in 16 years of democracy the state of the majority of black people has remained depressing.

Black women are the most vulnerable, that is why they suffer gender-based violence - including being used as lab rats in all manner of dangerous studies. This reality makes it hard to celebrate Women's Day.

The scourges of racism and gender oppression are ingrained in the social, political and economic structure of South Africa.

What MP Madikizela-Mandela seems to have failed to appreciate is that continued poverty is not a mystery but a direct result of the policies of her party in government.

The problem is not a need for more robust implementation of government policies because these policies are designed to favour the rich and only throws crumbs to the poor.

We need a full admission that ANC government policies have been successful in creating more wealth for the beneficiaries of apartheid and the new BEE elite.

Let's say it, our country works perfectly well for the rich. But the outcomes of these policies for the majority has been misery. The causes of poverty are neither complex to understand nor difficult to combat. We have seen with the World Cup how efficient government can become if it wants to.

We need more than mere change of "strategies and tactics" to deliver us from the current crisis of development for the majority.

There is a need for fundamental transformation of policies, including how government works and how accountability from representatives of the people is enforced. Right now we merely vote and hope.

It is true that leaders of the historic women's march against the arrogance of white power, such as Lilian Ngoyi, must be turning in their graves to see the widespread poverty of the majority and the shocking self-enrichment of a politically connected few.

What must we say when the wife of President Jacob Zuma is compelled by a court to pay her vulnerable domestic worker?

We read in the press with shock that mining companies owned by people who bear the name Mandela and Zuma can go on for months breaking our labour and environmental laws with impunity.

We know of the pain of forcible removal of communities in platinum areas so that mining companies linked to comrades can enjoy the profits. It's indeed also women who suffer most when white farmers evict families from farms. Where is the government when the women suffer?

Women oppression and marginalisation wouldn't be resolved by calls for a 50-50 representation. Politics that privileges the elite will always be harmful to the black majority and women will suffer the most.

We have seen that the DA with a woman leader has been very manly in dealing with the poor. There can be no women emancipation outside the emancipation of the majority.

• The writer is publisher of New Frank Talk