Judge's hearing told of sex pest texts

Judge President Selbe Mbenenge replied to a request from his sexual harassment accuser for help with a study assignment on gender-based violence by sending her a picture of a half-naked woman. This emerged in testimony before the Judicial Conduct Tribunal on Friday. It is hearing testimony from Andiswa Mengo, a judge’s secretary in the division, who claimed Mbenenge had hounded her for sex over a period of several months in 2021. Mengo responded to the picture of a muscular woman dressed in only a T-shirt by sending the JP an emoji of a teary-eyed face, says a Mail & Guardian report. She started weeping when evidence leader Salome Scheepers asked her how the photograph Mbenenge sent made her feel. ‘I felt naked and my emotions were torn,’ she replied when questioning resumed after an adjournment. In the same conversation with Mbenenge on 7 July, she later sent a sticker showing a man hanging himself with toilet paper. ‘I wanted to tell him that these messages that he has sent are putting me under a lot of stress,’ she explained. On the morning of 8 July, the judge sent her something he had written on gender-based violence, which he told Mengo he deplored, as she had requested.

Mengo has repeatedly told the tribunal that she felt and humiliated by the nature of Mbenenge’s WhatsApp messages and the fact that, regardless of how she responded, he invariably turned the conversation to sex. The tribunal heard throughout last week that her handling of the situation veered between firmly rejecting his advances and reciprocating with sexually-charged innuendo and, on occasion, flattery. The same pattern was evident in the transcripts of text conversations from which Scheepers led evidence on Friday, notes the M&G report. On 18 July, Mbenenge sent a flurry of messages that were subsequently deleted. This too was a pattern in their conversations and Mengo has testified that these were frequently pornographic images. She told the tribunal that, on 17 June, Mbenenge sent her a picture of his penis before asking for a sexual favour. Mbenenge has categorically denied sending such a photograph and a number of explicit pictures the previous day which were followed by text messages.