Eastern Cape judge president Selby Mbenenge on Monday took the stand for the first time to testify at the judicial conduct tribunal investigating a sexual harassment complaint filed against him by a judge’s secretary.
The tribunal, comprising of retired judge president Bernard Ngoepe, advocate Gift Mashaba and judge Cynthia Pretorius, is a first of its kind to probe a sexual harassment complaint against a judge.
The judge’s secretary, Andiswa Mengo, filed the complaint in 2023, accusing Mbenenge of making “unwarranted” sexual advances towards her at work and in WhatsApp conversations from June 2021 until November 2022.
If found guilty, Mbenenge could be impeached and lose his job. The judge has denied any impropriety, arguing that communication between him and Mengo was “consensual and flirtatious”.
Mbenenge criticised evidence leader Salome Scheepers’ approach in the tribunal’s investigation, lamenting some of the claims were not properly probed. He spent hours taking the tribunal through documents which he argued nullified Mengo’s testimony that he asked her for oral sex in his office at the Mthatha high court in November 2022.
Mengo during cross-examination earlier said she could not remember the date of the alleged incident but said it was November 14 or 15 2022.
Mbenenge told the tribunal Mengo struggled to remember the date because “it never happened.”
“I look at it as a campaign to shame me. It is lies, it never happened,” he said. “The complainant knows as much as I do that it never took place.”
He said he last saw Mengo on November 14 2022, in his office with two other court officials wherein he commented about her wearing colourful attire.
Mbenenge was adamant there was no evidence or camera footage to support the claim by Mengo and that the claim should have been abandoned by the tribunal.
Mbenenge said the tribunal should have engaged security staff to test the allegation that he ordered for deleting of the footage on the day in question.
“The officer leading evidence is not a prosecutor in these proceedings. It is incumbent on the officer leading evidence to conduct investigations and not to be partisan,” he said,
He also denied he sent explicit pictures to Mengo on WhatsApp during their months of chatting. The judge president said there were several discrepancies in Mengo’s testimony with attached pictures showing different times from referenced texts.
Mbenenge also dismissed the testimony of gender-based violence expert Lisa Vetten, who testified Mengo was reluctant in her engagements with the judge and used different strategies to reject his sexual advances.
Mbenege echoed the sentiments of his lawyer, Muzi Sikhakhane, that Vetten’s analysis of the interactions were misplaced because she was white and misunderstood certain social cues among the two isiXhosa speakers.
Mengo sent him pictures but deleted the record of these in the files before the tribunal. She consented to their communication and did not raise discomfort with him, he said. He described the publication of the chats between them as “embarrassing” but consensual.
“These chats may have embarrassed many South Africans as they do me as I talk. That is regrettable. This relationship never gravitated to a romantic relationship. It was flirtatious. The intention was to have a romantic relationship with the complainant.”
Mbenenge will continue on the stand on Tuesday.
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