UP’s Indigenous plants for your flower crowns
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Perdeby
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Tuks se amptelike studentekoerant / Official Tuks student newspaper / Kuranta ya baithuti ya semmušo ya Tuks
23October2017
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SRC member apologises for using a racial slur -pg 3 Students and volunteers at the CSA&G held a demonstration against a senior staff member of the Centre who has been accused of sexually harassing volunteers and staff members. Photo: Fezekile Msimang
CSA&G senior staff member faces sexual harassment charges DITEBOGO TSHAKA AND KOKETSO NGWENYA
On 16 October a group of students and volunteers at the Centre for Sexualities, Aids and Gender (CSA&G) held a demonstration against a senior staff member who has been accused of harassing, manipulating and intimidating volunteers and staff members of the centre in order to solicit sexual favours. The silent protest was intended to represent the perceived silencing of the persons who brought claims forward against the accused senior staff member. The senior staff member is facing allegations that include harassing and manipulating students for sexual favours, threatening student volunteers and staff members for informing volunteers that he is married, offering student volunteers jobs and promising them international trips to solicit sexual favours, spreading rumours about student volunteers who reject his offers and making arrangements to fire them from the Centre, among other things. During the demonstration, the demonstrators held placards that represented a timeline of events from the time the matter was reported to the Centre’s management. Perdeby sat down with four of the eleven individuals who had laid formal statements against the accused. Three of them are volunteers and one of them is a staff member at the Centre.
On 4 August a group of students and volunteers at the CSA&G held a meeting with the centre’s director, deputy director and another staff member to talk about the various experiences they had had with the accused. “During that occasion many people brought up some of the unwanted sexual advances this person has made on them and the inappropriate behaviour in the workplace and his attempts to manipulate people through money and overseas trips and as well as the threats and intimidation of certain staff members,” recalled the first volunteer who wished to remain anonymous. She explained further, “Maybe not everyone who was present had experienced some kind of sexual advances but they witnessed it. They witnessed him scouting for young girls, they witnessed him lying to young girls, offering things — a lot of inappropriate behaviour. So that’s what we spoke about in the first session and because it was so serious they decided to escalate it and they took it to HR. Then they gave us feedback that…we’d be contacted to give statements”. During the demonstration, the Director of CSA&G, Mary Crewe, addressed the students to give them an explanation. She stated several times, “My hands are tied, I have tried to take the matter to relevant parties without any response. I have emailed Mr [Makgabo] Sekobelo (the Deputy Director for Employment Relations and Wellness from the
Human Resources Department) who has not been responding to my emails. In the past month I have sent two emails a week to escalate the matter. The accused senior staff member still works for the Centre. It is not up to me to fire him but UP management.” Crewe said that she accepted the demonstration, but suggested that it was not a helpful strategy on the part of students and volunteers of the centre and reiterated that they should take the demonstration to Sekobelo’s office and to UP Security Services. The protesters were disgruntled with the response of the director, asserted that they no longer needed explanations and demanded that action be taken against the accused. At the time of going to print, Sekobelo was unavailable for comment. On 16 August UP Security Services contacted staff and student volunteers and requested statements from them within 72 hours. “We gave our statements and the investigator I spoke to told me that we have to give our statements … so that they can compile a preliminary report based on the investigation and make recommendations as to what should follow next,” said one volunteer. “So from our understanding that happened, and it was recommended that his person is suspended immediately, which then happened [as] they were suspended,” she recalls. Following this development, the accused senior manager was
met with a suspension and was instructed to not enter campus pending the investigation. However, UP Department of Security Services had not barred his access from the university premises. As a result, on 11 September the accused returned to work and warning was not given to student volunteers by Centre management that he was set to return. “So during the time of their suspension, our understanding is that Person X is not allowed to be present on the premises, but on various occasions this person was present in the premises, in the CSA&G [and] coming to work like it’s a normal day. So that is essentially what we were demonstrating against,” the volunteer explained. The Deputy Director of CSA&G, Pierre Brouard stated “he [the accused senior staff member] was out of the country at the time the issues were raised and was asked not to return to the CSA&G”. According to student volunteers “no measures were put in place by management of CSA&G to protect us from him”. Brouard told Perdeby, “We believe that the CSA&G is and should be strengthened as a safe space where full discussions can take place, the students are encouraged to discuss issues that affect them and ways in which these can be resolved.” He also mentioned that the current sexual harassment policy is available in the CSA&G and had been shared with the students.
Continued on page 3
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