Today's Labour News

Daily Maverick reports that lawyers for Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge, who is accused of sexually harassing court secretary Andiswa Mengo, have suggested the complaint was designed to “end his career”.

Advocate Muzi Sikhakhane, presenting his closing arguments at the marathon Judicial Conduct Tribunal, also suggested that Mengo’s allegations were “fabrications” being viewed through a “feminist, Western” framework that did not apply in this instance. Sikhakhane asserted: “People with western notions of this conversation [in explicit WhatsApps between Mbenenge and Mengo] enter through a notion of being superior” and did not understand Xhosa culture.

Responding to these assertions, evidence leader advocate Salome Scheepers, as well as advocate Nasreen Rajab-Budlender for Mengo, pointed out that the complainant had not been asked what her “cultural” understanding of the situation might have been. “This should have been put to her, but was not. There is no merit to this argument,” said Rajab-Budlender. Scheepers rejected the argument of Mbenenge’s team that she and Rajab-Budlender had “infantilised” Mengo by suggesting that the power imbalance between a judge president and a court secretary was the issue, and Mengo had possessed the agency to stop it.

In closing, tribunal chairperson retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe indicated that the tribunal would be deciding the matter “in accordance with the law and the facts of this case and not in accordance with the court of public opinion, one way or the other. We are totally unmoved by the court of public opinion.”

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Marianne Thamm at Daily Maverick

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