Mbenenge's tribunal hearing exposes rifts in legal fraternity

The inquiry has laid bare deep fault lines in judicial culture and gender politics. By Marianne Thamm

- Marianne Thamm

Last week, the gruelling Judicial Conduct Tribunal hearing into allegations of sexual harassment against Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge adjourned to October for argument.

That is when advocates Muzi Sikhakhane for Mbenenge and Nasreen Rajab-Budlender for the complainant, court secretary Andiswa Mengo, will argue the case of a lifetime.

The public inquiry, which began in January and is headed by retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe, has laid bare not only the intimate and private lives of Mbenenge and his accuser, but also the choppy waters in the legal fraternity (for it is a fraternity) itself.

The creaking shifts in the tectonic plates can be traced in the arc of this extraordinary inquiry, which has exposed a chasm between old and new, interpretations of language, the law and culture, and the meaning of words.

As the Masimanyane Women's Rights International, the Women's Ikhwelo Network and other women's groups noted in a media statement last week, "words have power and consequences".

"We are appalled by the misogynistic and patriarchal statements made by Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge during his sexual harassment tribunal," they wrote. The senior judge's "invocation of so-called cultural norms to justify sexual misconduct is an affront not only to women, but to the integrity of the entire South African Constitution and the judiciary".

Rift in Pabasa