20 January 2025
The Judicial Conduct Tribunal into a complaint of sexual harassment against Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge (above) entered its second week on Monday. Photo: Office of the Chief Justice / N Mabusela.
On Monday, judges’ secretary Andiswa Mengo claimed that Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge said, “Do you see how much effect you have on me?” and pointed towards the front of his pants.
She said there was a “round shape”, a bulge - indicative of the fact that he was “horny”. He was fiddling with his zip.
“He asked me if I didn’t want to suck it,” she said, her voice breaking. Tears streamed down her face.
She said the incident occurred in the week of 14 November 2022 when he called her into his chambers at the Umtata High Court.
Mengo is testifying before a Judicial Conduct Tribunal which is probing her allegations that he sexually harassed her between 2021 and 2022 through multiple suggestive messages via WhatsApp, inappropriate comments and gestures regarding her appearance at work, and this specific incident in his chambers.
The tribunal has entered its second week with most of the evidence so far relating to details of the many WhatsApp conversations between them, most of them initiated by Mbenenge after work hours.
She previously testified that he had sent her a picture of his penis which she had identified because “the hair was the same colour as the hair on his head”.
He also sent her sexually suggestive emojis and stickers. Much of this evidence is contained in downloads from Mengo’s cellphone.
But on Monday, evidence leader Advocate Salome Scheepers introduced exchanges which did not form part of the transcripts but came from “screenshots” which Mengo said she had taken and sent to others for “safekeeping” before Mbenenge could delete them.
These formed part of her initial complaint to the Judicial Conduct Committee.
She testified about another picture he had sent her of a penis.
She had made a screenshot of it before he could delete it and sent it to two colleagues (one of whom has subsequently died).
When she sent it to the second colleague, “Brenda”, Brenda responded: “Who sent you this. Is it Mbenenge?”
Mengo said Brenda had then said, “He is the person that sends these to people.”
In another screenshot, which she said she messaged to him in response to the penis picture, she had said, “Please don’t take out your shit on me. I am not like the others. I respect myself so can you for one respect me before I lose it or go crazy. You make me lose morals with what you are doing. You are an elder.”
Asked why she had sent him this message, she said, “I was fed up. These pictures were being repeatedly sent to me and I was not responding to them. I was also angered by the fact that my word was not heard. And he did not understand the manner in which I was saying no to him.”
After the incident in his chambers, Mengo said she was shocked. She went back to her office and left work. She said she did not initially tell anyone, because she was “scared no-one would believe me”.
She did however later inform a colleague and a judge and the director of court operations, Denim Kroquwana.
She had proposed to him a “round table” meeting, with judges selected by her, at which she would tell Mbenenge to “stop”.
But this meeting never happened. She heard that Mbenenge was saying she was telling lies.
In early December 2022, in the early hours one morning, she uploaded their WhatsApp chats, the picture of his “private part”, and his profile picture onto her WhatsApp status, with the words, “Let the bus move”.
Asked why she did this, she said, “No one believed me. No one was going to believe me. It was my way of crying out that here is the proof. Let them see it for themselves.”
During that day, Mbenenge had twice tried to call her but she did not take his calls and finally blocked him because she “wanted peace”.
Judge Lindiwe Rusi had messaged and phoned several times. She said “tata” [Mbenenge] was asking what she wanted, what he could do for her.
“I said there’s nothing,” she said.
Mengo said when she went to Gauteng to lay a formal complaint, she was told by an advocate in the office of the Chief Justice that she was not the first to complain about him.
The hearing, which is chaired by retired Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, will continue on Tuesday.