Preview Newsletter
Equal Education Monitoring 5/25/2018
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Scandal-hit NGO opens three probes
May 25, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Rumana Akoob and Simon Allison
Equal Education is setting up three inquiries in response to sexual harassment allegations at the organisation. -
Equal Education ‘Horrified’ by Sexual Abuse Claims Against Former Members
May 24, 2018 | Eyewitness News
By Shamiela Fisher
Equal Education says it is horrified by claims of sexual harassment by three of its former members. -
We are looking inward: Equal Education
May 25, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Equal Education
The past few weeks have been among the most painful in Equal Education’s 10-year history. -
Letters to the Editor: May 25 to 31
May 24, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Phathiswa Shushwana
I am a 23-year-old woman, who was an Equal Education member from 2008 to 2013. I was shocked when I read the Mail & Guardian article “NGO’s sexual harassment woes grow” about former treasurer of the organisation Doron Isaacs and sexual misconduct. -
Harassment claims in civil society organisations: We should all be listening
May 25, 2018 | Dailv Maverick
By Gabriella Razzano and Alison Tilley
Just because you have a mission which is about changing the world for the better does not mean that you are insulated from the evils of the world. -
#MeToo build-up in the activist community
May 24, 2018 | South Africa Jewish Report
By Gillian Klawansky
Doron Isaacs, a founding member and now the former treasurer of the social justice organisation, Equal Education (EE), is at the centre of a media storm as he faces multiple claims of sexual harassment.
Traditional Media Coverage
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Scandal-hit NGO opens three probes
May 25, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Rumana Akoob and Simon Allison
Equal Education is setting up three inquiries in response to sexual harassment allegations at the organisation.
The allegations, against three senior men, were revealed by the Mail & Guardian last week.
The first inquiry, which has already begun work, will look into allegations of sexual harassment against former general secretary Tshepo Motsepe, who resigned in late April. The panel will be chaired by Mercia Andrews, who is the codirector of the Trust for Community Outreach and Education.
Brad Brockman, a member of Equal Education’s national council, said the terms of reference of this particular inquiry are limited to allegations of sexual harassment levelled against Motsepe. He added that the panel is “empowered to refer any other matter arising for further investigation, exploration or attention, either as the subject of its own inquiry or as part of a broader assessment process”.
After two official complaints were received, a second inquiry — this time into allegations against the former treasurer and cofounder of Equal Education, Doron Isaacs — will also be established.
Brockman said the first complaint was submitted by members of Equal Education’s management team, and the second was submitted by members of Equal Education’s senior management team.
The second probe will look into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct levelled against Isaacs while he was at Equal Education. It will include a review of the process followed and the findings made in a 2011 investigation into Isaacs’s conduct.
The M&G revealed this week that the 2011 investigation was conducted by four friends of Isaacs, representing a potential conflict of interest.
“The terms of reference of [the new] inquiry are being developed with the assistance of independent legal counsel, and the members of the panel tasked with conducting the inquiry are being recruited by [Equal Education’s] national council … We need to emphasise that setting up this inquiry is an urgent priority for Equal Education,” Brockman said.
A broader assessment process will examine Equal Education’s record of dealing with mistreatment in the workplace, the organisation’s policies and procedures with regard to sexual harassment and the organisational “norms and culture”.
“The form which the broader assessment process will take, and who the independent persons will be that Equal Education asks to assist in this process, is still being investigated by the national council,” Brockman said.
Motsepe, Isaacs and the organisation’s former national organising head, Luyolo Mazwembe, have denied the allegations against them.
The past seven days have been tumultuous for the civil society organisation, which has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Last Friday, Isaacs resigned, although he did not admit guilt.
On Monday, the Western Cape’s education MEC, Debbie Schäfer, ordered Equal Education to “cease operations” at schools around the province until they meet to discuss a way forward. She also ordered Equal Education to furnish her with the names of any pupils with whom the men accused of sexual harassment may have come into contact — although there is no suggestion that any of the alleged sexual harassment was directed at minors.
Equal Education responded that the MEC’s request was unclear and unjustified. “We reject the political opportunism of her media statement and will not cease our important work in the Western Cape,” it said.
Meanwhile, the organisation’s donors have been watching the developments with concern. Two funders — Comic Relief and the Wallace Global Fund — said they would suspend any further grants until the allegations have been properly investigated.
“It was troubling to learn from the media of the disturbing allegations of a pattern of sexual harassment within the organisation,” said Ellen Dorsey, chief executive of the Wallace Global Fund, responding to the M&G.
She added: “As we are a foundation based in the United States without staff in South Africa to monitor actions of the organisation on a routine basis, it is difficult to have an informed opinion on the veracity of the claims.
“However, we know that typically survivors do not come forward at great risk to themselves without cause. We will not make another grant until we have done further due diligence and are convinced that the allegations have been adequately investigated by the board through an outside and transparent process.”
In a tense interview on Radio 702 on Wednesday, Zackie Achmat defended the organisation’s track record but said that some things could have been handled better.
Achmat, a well-known activist and former Equal Education chairperson, was accused of covering up sexual harassment allegations in the organisation, which he denies. “I am willing to submit myself to public scrutiny …and I am really sorry if anyone has felt threatened and unable to come to me … and I want to make reparations. I, as a man, as a black man, have a duty to address those,” he told presenter Eusebius McKaiser.
https://mg.co.za/article/2018-05-25-00-scandal-hit-ngo-opens-three-probes
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Equal Education ‘Horrified’ by Sexual Abuse Claims Against Former Members
May 24, 2018 | Eyewitness News
By Shamiela Fisher
Equal Education says it is horrified by claims of sexual harassment by three of its former members.
The lobby group says it has set up an independent inquiry to examine the allegations of abuse at the workplace.
Tshepo Motsepe, Luyolo Mazwembe and Doron Isaacs have resigned since the scandal came to light.
They have denied the allegations.
The group's Leanne-Jansen Thomas said: “There’s going to be an inquiry to look at what our current organisation culture is and why when people experience mistreatment, they don’t feel safe enough to immediately come forward.”
Jansen-Thomas says an online system will be put in place for people to tell their stories anonymously.
“There are separate independent panels that are looking into different kinds of allegations. An email address has been established for each of those panellists and anyone who is feeling has suffered an abuse of power can then make submissions.”
http://ewn.co.za/2018/05/24/equal-education-horrified-by-sexual-abuse-claims-against-former-members
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We are looking inward: Equal Education
May 25, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Equal Education
The past few weeks have been among the most painful in Equal Education’s 10-year history.
We have been devastated by allegations of sexual harassment levelled against three men who were in leadership positions in our movement. We are angered by any violation of the principles we hold dear. And we are saddened when we are not able to prevent this from happening. We have a responsibility to each woman who has had the courage to come forward, and to the thousands of Equal Education members who have put their trust in our movement.
We recognise this time as a difficult, but important, moment of learning.
Equal Education is meant to be a space that represents the best of what society can be. We are facing up to the reality that we have been unable to extract ourselves from the patriarchal and misogynistic society in which Equal Education exists. Understanding this failure also means understanding how our movement’s culture, policies and practices contributed to what we have seen unfold. The events of the past month have challenged our core values.
At its heart, Equal Education is a youth movement. Pupils talk to people only a few years older than them — what Equal Education calls facilitators. Every week, these groups of young people meet and critically reflect on the issues in their schools and broader communities to take action to change them.
Agency is built. Knowledge is developed. And action follows. A sense of community and movement develops from this. For many, Equal Education becomes our lives; friends become indistinguishable from comrades. These connections persist beyond Equal Education and long after people leave the movement.
Equal Education was established with a simple ideal: that young people could, through organisation and mobilisation, tackle the deep inequalities that beset their schools and communities. Seven pupils attended the first Equal Education youth meeting; today more than 7 000 young people participate in our activities.
One of the most painful lessons from this time is the feeling among some current and former staff members that Equal Education’s current leadership would not act upon allegations of sexual harassment levelled against senior employees. The impression created by some news articles is that Equal Education only started investigating allegations after probes from the media, but that is untrue.
A preliminary investigation into the conduct of the former general secretary was undertaken a day after the allegations against him were brought to the senior management team, and Equal Education’s national council, our movement’s highest decision-making structure, resolved that a full inquiry be established a day after he was confronted with the allegations. Equal Education’s current leadership has sought to deal decisively with every allegation put before us.
We are asking ourselves hard questions about what might have nonetheless contributed to people feeling scared to come forward. To help us answer this question, our national council has resolved to institute an independent inquiry into Equal Education’s policies and procedures and our organisational culture. Our senior management team has asked the national council to investigate its handling of sexual harassment in the workplace.
We have strict and clear policies on sexual harassment. The important lesson for us is that having policies in place is not enough. What is critical is how the people, and especially leadership, who make up our movement engage with these policies.
In relation to the 2011 investigation into the conduct of Doron Isaacs, Equal Education’s national council has resolved that a new and separate panel of inquiry should probe allegations of sexual harassment levelled against him. It will also look into the 2011 investigation at the request of our management team, which has raised serious concerns about it. Equal Education’s new leadership will face up to any mistakes uncovered by the new process, and learn from them.
Because our primary responsibility is to our members, we have spent many weeks informing them of developments with in-person meetings across the country. We have also had follow-up meetings to discuss further developments.
To clarify, as a social movement Equal Education has thousands of pupils as members, spread over five provinces. The heads of our movement and members of the national council are democratically elected by these members. We would have been remiss if our membership had to learn this news through a public statement or electronic communication.
We would be failing in our duty if we did not pause to note our deep concern for complainants. The allegations were brought by several women towards whom Equal Education feels an immense responsibility, both to ensure a fair and rigorous investigative process and to protect their privacy.
We plead with the public and the media that they don’t speculate about their identities.
We fully support public scrutiny of this process but we must not lose sight of their needs, and the potential to discourage other women from coming forward to expose wrongdoing.
These are unprecedented times of scrutiny, internally and externally, which are important for realigning the movement to our values and principles. These have not been isolated incidents and are part of a deeper problem.
More than anything, this has been a wake-up call for our movement. This critical moment is forcing us, as Equal Education and as civil society more broadly, to interrogate our approach to pursuing social justice while confronting ingrained systems of patriarchy, sexism and power.
It is with the strength, support and resilience of our members, supporters, partner organisations and staff members that we will ensure justice for complainants and continue to do important work. We are reclaiming our movement, reaffirming our dedication to building a space that has no room for violation or abuse of power, and committing to continue fighting for equitable education in our lifetime.
https://mg.co.za/article/2018-05-25-00-we-are-looking-inward-equal-education
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Letters to the Editor: May 25 to 31
May 24, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Phathiswa Shushwana
Equal Education is a safe spaceI am a 23-year-old woman, who was an Equal Education member from 2008 to 2013.
I was shocked when I read the Mail & Guardian article “NGO’s sexual harassment woes grow” about former treasurer of the organisation Doron Isaacs and sexual misconduct.
I have known Doron for 10 years and worked with him closely during my time in Equal Education.
It was great working with him. He was very supportive of both my academic and activist work. Doron became my role model and my mentor — he was a great leader. He has never given me any reason to be uncomfortable around him and I always felt safe.
I think all my friends at Equal Education enjoyed working with him; he was a mentor to a lot of us. We looked up to him because he was a positive influence and he was fun to be around. The way I saw it, he was loved by everyone.
During my time working at Equal Education, Doron worked closely with a lot of women. Over the years I have had contact with hundreds of women at Equal Education I have never heard any of them saying they felt intimidated or threatened by Doron or had bad experiences when working with him. I have never heard anyone saying they felt uncomfortable around him.
From my experience, I believe it is false to claim that Doron is “widely known” for negative sexual conduct, as claimed by an anonymous source in the M&G article — this is not true in my experience within Equal Education.
In 2008, when I joined the organisation, it was soon after it began working, when it was running the Fix our Schools campaign. This campaign was directed at my school and so I got to work closely with Doron. I was in grade eight at the time.
Then in 2009, I worked with him again as he would help me with research when I was writing a speech. He also helped me to prepare for press conferences. Sometimes my friend and I would work at his and his partner’s house together.
At some point in 2010, I stopped attending Equal Education. One day during that time Doron came to visit me and we had a fruitful conversation. He was very supportive. After talking to him I decided to go back to the organisation.
In 2011, I was elected to the Equal Education board where I also worked with Doron.
Doron has always supported me, even academically. When I was in matric, he and his partner assisted me with my studies in preparation for my exams.
Even after I stopped working at Equal Education in 2013, Doron continued to be supportive to me. We met last year when we were both in the Eastern Cape. We have not seen each other or been in contact since then. He is about the only person in the organisation who followed through on my life outside of Equal Education.
For me, as a young woman, Equal Education has always felt like a safe space. At the Equal Education office I felt safe from crime and the horrible things that happen in my community.
The organisation offered me a positive way to spend my time away from anything that could change the way I valued education, and nothing but education at the time.
Doron helped to build that environment.
I think in all parts of our lives there is a need for a platform to be created for women to express themselves without fear of being threatened. Women need to be empowered to speak out, including about sexual harassment.
I am not saying Doron is innocent of these allegations — I didn’t spend every day with him. I don’t know who he went out with.
But I am saying that Doron is a good and trustworthy person. My experience is that Doron has made many women at Equal Education feel valued, safe and appreciated and that they have enjoyed working with him. — Phathiswa Shushwana, Khayelitsha
https://mg.co.za/article/2018-05-25-00-letters-to-the-editor-may-25-to-31
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Harassment claims in civil society organisations: We should all be listening
May 25, 2018 | Dailv Maverick
By Gabriella Razzano and Alison Tilley
Just because you have a mission which is about changing the world for the better does not mean that you are insulated from the evils of the world.
Civil society organisations have been rocked by the allegations of harassment in Equal Education, alongside the allegations of a cover up and an organisational culture of intimidation that prevented women from speaking out. An inquiry is under way.
Sexual harassment is ultimately an abuse of power, and the abuse of power is one of the most important issues our society faces. It’s one of the reasons that speaking truth to power is necessary. Speaking out is theoretically one of the things that social justice organisations do as part of their bread and butter. Because it is such a part of our work, we may assume that we know how to do it, or that it will be easier, when the issues are closer to home. That’s unfortunately just not true.
Speaking out about sexual harassment is hard. It is particularly hard when in doing it you risk your job. It is even harder when you can see that such a report might result in the kind of conflict that will destabilise and potentially destroy the organisation you work for. Of course, the same can be said about reporting corruption, misuse of funds, or any of the other abuses, which our whistle-blower law, the Protected Disclosures Act, actively encourages us to disclose.
Just because you have a mission which is about changing the world for the better does not mean that you are insulated from the evils of the world. Systems and processes can be put in place to ensure that when people raise concerns in the workplace, whatever the issues are, that they are dealt with constructively.
They of course have their limits. In our very hierarchical society where there are such high levels of inequality, such deference to power, and such a deeply gendered community, it seems miraculous when people do speak out. Think what they face.
First, the question is always asked: why? Why are you saying this now? What is your motive? But the real question should be, does it matter? Not really. If you are raising a concern about someone’s behaviour, does it matter why you are doing it, if your concern is valid?
Most whistle-blowers are forced down a terrifying gauntlet. And it appears that they are not safe within any work environment, even the human rights environment. Given the risks, you would think whistle-blowers would regret saying anything in the first place. In running a helpline for people raising concerns, it’s a question you get to ask. Oddly enough, people don’t. They generally find themselves compelled to speak. They literally cannot stay silent. Their internal system of values, their own sense of right and wrong, pushes them to take action.
We must put systems in place, and try to encourage a culture of raising issues. Those systems need to be quick, responsive, and clear. They cannot just be a matter of a few pages in a policy document. They have to be part of the organisational culture, and part of how management appraises and rewards behaviour. The response to such behaviour is also not an exercise in democracy. It is not a question of a vote, as to whether the person concerned is popular or not. Once the facts in a situation are established, the prescribed action must follow.
Holding ourselves to these standards is critical. No organisation can be above listening. ODAC, the Open Democracy Advice Centre, will continue to foster an environment which protects whistle-blowers, regardless from where they speak. DM
Gabriella Razzano and Alison Tilley are ODAC representatives
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-05-25-harassment-claims-in-civil-society-organisations-we-should-all-be-listening/#.WwfbgkiFNm8
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#MeToo build-up in the activist community
May 24, 2018 | South Africa Jewish Report
By Gillian Klawansky
Doron Isaacs, a founding member and now the former treasurer of the social justice organisation, Equal Education (EE), is at the centre of a media storm as he faces multiple claims of sexual harassment.
How does sexual harassment happen in an organisation dedicated to correcting social injustices? And with the rise of the #MeToo movement, are the tides changing in standing up to such behaviour?
In the past month, Isaacs, former general secretary Tshepo Motsepe, and former head of national organising Luyolo Mazwembe, have resigned – all facing allegations of sexual harassment.
In articles in the Mail & Guardian newspaper, EE has been accused of covering up wrongdoing and creating an “organisational culture of intimidation”.
http://www.sajr.co.za/news-and-articles/2018/05/24/metoo-build-up-in-the-activist-community
Traditional Media Coverage
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