Eastern Cape judge president Selby Mbenenge's sexual harassment complainant has testified she received threats days after filing a complaint against him and that certain information went missing from her phone after a police probe.
The complainant, judges' secretary Andiswa Mengo, testified on the 10th day of the judicial conduct tribunal on Friday that she feared for her safety after receiving a call in January 2023 threatening her and telling her to drop charges against the judge president.
The tribunal is the first to investigate a judge facing sexual harassment allegations and if found guilty this could trigger a process for his impeachment.
Mengo accuses Mbenenge of making “unwarranted” sexual advances towards her at work and on WhatsApp conversations from June 2021 until November 2022.
Mbenenge's lawyer, advocate Muzi Sikhakhane has suggested to the tribunal that Mbenenge should not be the “only one” to face dire implications should he be found in the wrong, but the complainant should face harsh punishment should she be found she lied under oath — as he has suggested.
Sikhakhane, during his cross-examination of Mengo, disputed engagements between the two were not “consensual”. He further disputed Mbenenge sent Mengo explicit pictures.
He said this would be substantiated by a cellphone data analyst who would testify to the tribunal, chaired by retired Gauteng judge president Bernard Ngoepe, that there was no trace of nude pictures on Mengo and Mbenenge's phones when they were taken for information download.
Mengo previously testified Mbenenge deleted explicit pictures he sent to her on WhatsApp.
Mengo's attorney, advocate Nasreen Rajab-Budlender asked the complainant whether she deleted any data from her phone before the tribunal.
Mengo said she did not delete information from her phone but recounted giving her cellphone to the police in January 2023 after allegedly receiving threatening calls.
“I did not delete anything but in January 2023 when I got threatened, I handed in my phone [to the police] to trace the call. When the phone was brought back to me, some of the data was not there.”
After the threat, Mengo said she had to move from the Eastern Cape to Johannesburg for safety reasons pending investigations.
Her phone was then taken by the tribunal evidence leader, advocate Salome Scheepers, to download information in late December 2024 and she received it in January 2025.
The tribunal took Mbenenge and Mengo's phones two years after their last conversation on WhatsApp.
Mengo was adamant one of the explicit pictures she received from Mbenenge would show up in her conversations with one of her colleagues. Mengo, on Monday, testified she sent the picture to two of her colleagues.
She said when she sent the picture to her colleague, Brenda Nguta-Jobela, she confirmed that other court officials received explicit pictures from Mbenenge.
Sikhakhane wrapping his cross-examination on Friday lamented Mengo did not “expressly” reject the judge president’s sexual advances despite feeling uncomfortable.
“He [Mbenenge] will agree and state that the discussions did get sexual. His version will be that the conversations were not unwelcome. He will also state why he realises that the discussion between the two of you may be embarrassing because it was private, but he will fundamentally deny he abused his power in those conversations. He will say that how you felt was not clearly communicated to him,” Sikhakhane said.
Mengo disputed she did not reject Mbenenge's advances. She pinned her rejection on their conversation in June 2021 on WhatsApp when Mbenenge asked her whether they could be intimate.
She initially responded to the request by referring Mbenenge to a Bible verse, Psalm 1:1 from the Xhosa version of the Bible, telling him to pay attention to the first word, which is “no”.
She then directly responded to his question with a “no” written in bold capital letters, adding: “We should meet but not become intimate.”
The judge president responded: “What if we melt, which is not impossible?” To this, she responded: “It is impossible.”
The tribunal was adjourned on Friday and would continue on May 5-16.
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