Preview Newsletter
Equal Education Monitoring 6/1/2018
-
Equal Education grapples with ‘toxic’ culture
Jun 1, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Rumana Akoob and Simon Allison
-
How reporting on sexual harassment can become an ethical quagmire
Jun 1, 2018 | Daily Maverick
By Rebecca Davis
-
LRC allows 'harasser' to resign
Jun 1, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Rumana Akoob
Traditional Media Coverage
-
Equal Education grapples with ‘toxic’ culture
Jun 1, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Rumana Akoob and Simon Allison
In the wake of its sexual harassment scandal, Equal Education’s management will carry out a “broad assessment” of the organisation’s working culture — but it’s looking further than just sexual harassment.
Last month, the Mail & Guardian revealed sexual harassment allegations against three men connected with Equal Education. During the investigation, other allegations of the abuse of power in the civil society organisation emerged.
“We believe that the current management and leadership of Equal Education has always attempted to create a nonracial, nonsexist, welcoming and safe environment for all staffers and volunteers. But we are welcoming of criticism, and correction, if the organisation has fallen short in these areas,” Equal Education said in response to questions.
Silenced
One example of an allegation of bullying in the workplace comes from Kelly Rosenthal, who worked at Equal Education between May 2010 and December 2011.
“I was not sexually harassed at Equal Education. But like many others, I was bullied and intimidated. Anyone who heard [well-known activist] Zackie Achmat’s radio interview with Eusebius McKaiser last week will know that these two things cannot be discussed independently: a culture of intimidation and fear enabled a culture of misogyny and sexual harassment to operate more or less unchecked,” she said.
Rosenthal said she had to sign a mutual termination agreement, which prevented her from saying anything negative about the organisation or her former colleagues.
She said Doron Isaacs, the Equal Education co-founder who has been accused of sexual harassment but denies all allegations, forced her to sign it. According to email correspondence seen by the M&G,Isaacs threatened to “revise” her reference if she refused.
A founding member of Equal Education, Joey Hasson, said Rosenthal had confided in him about the nondisclosure conditions at the time, that she had been told by Isaacs she would not receive a reference from him if she did not sign it and that she therefore had felt coerced into doing so.
“I was not involved in the conversation about the [nondisclosure conditions] directly but when Kelly told me about it, I suggested she seek legal advice,” he said.
Isaacs disputes this claim, saying that the agreement was requested by Rosenthal, and that it was a “bog standard” one. He said he did not recall discussing a reference with Rosenthal “but we’d provided a positive reference to the employee in PDF form more than a month prior”.
But his version that the agreement was standard practice is contradicted by Equal Education itself, which told the M&G that “the signing of broad nondisclosure conditions, as evidenced in 2011, is not [standard] practice at Equal Education”.
After the sexual harassment allegations became public last month, Rosenthal asked to be released from the agreement and management responded: “Speak your truth.”
Mixed experiences
Two former Equalisers — the organisation’s term for high school volunteers — told the M&G that they regretted their involvement with the organisation. They describe being told to turn up at marches and demonstrations they knew little about, and given slogans to write on posters. Far from developing their own political activism, they felt they were just pawns in the organisation’s political games.
“Equal Education had a good vision. But as a black person who was once involved, I felt like we were being used. They knew that we were hungry. They would make us all these promises, say we would finish school, go to university. After the organisation got prominent and got funding, they had no more use for us. How many young female leaders got into senior positions?” said one.
Another former Equaliser said: “They were selling hope to us. I was used to get funding, and then when that funding came, we would know nothing about it. We were this idea of black children, as numbers, for their own politics.”
In its 10-year history, however, Equal Education has worked with more than 1 000 volunteers and staff members and the experience of the two Equalisers is not universal.
Another former Equaliser, Phathiswa Shushwana, spoke highly of her experience with Equal Education in a letter to the M&G, which was published in the newspaper last week.
“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,” she said.
Equal Education, in response, said it “will listen to individual stories from the past 10 years of Equal Education, in order to understand the ways that Equal Education can build itself into a stronger movement”.
It stressed that it is black-led and black-run: “Ninety-six percent of Equal Education’s current staff members are black. The majority of Equal Education’s current management team is made up of black women ... Equal Education has consistently and deliberately provided pathways and opportunities for black women to progress through its structures.”Salary scale
Equal Education’s pay scale is another issue that has proved divisive, especially the difference between the highest and lowest earners.
Heidi Swart worked at Equal Education from 2013 to 2014, and was the staff representative on the human resources committee. Swart negotiated to reduce the salary gap between grassroots workers and management.
“Lower earners, many with families, said they struggled financially. The lowest salary was around R3 500 a month. The highest — reserved for management — was about R25 000. A sliding scale for yearly increases was proposed, whereby lower salary bands received higher percentage increases. The top bands would only be adjusted for inflation.
“If this plan was indeed fully implemented, it wasn’t brought to my attention. To my knowledge, the lowest salary was increased to R4 500 but senior management raised their potential earnings to R29 500, and increases for other low-level earners were negligible.”
The M&G has seen documents that support Swart’s account and indicating that a new salary band for senior management had been added in 2014. But Equal Education disputes this, saying “the information provided to the Mail & Guardian is incorrect or has perhaps been misunderstood”.
It defended its pay scale: “Unfortunately, South Africa is a market economy where people with more formal education, experience and marketable skills generally command higher salaries ... Nonetheless, our orientation has always been to keep the salary differential between the highest and lowest earners as small as possible.”
As of 2014, after a restructuring of salaries, there was a ratio of 1:6 between the lowest full-time package and the highest. A similar ratio pertains today, the organisation said.
Swart quit over the pay issue. “There is an ethical way to do community work, especially if your mantra is social equality ... Paying young people who act as community leaders a monthly stipend of R2 000 to do grassroots empowerment, while management can earn 12 times that from an office chair — from a socialist perspective, that’s unethical.”Broad assessment
Sources contacted by the M&G have welcomed Equal Education’s plans for a broad assessment process, which will examine the organisation’s record of dealing with mistreatment in the workplace, its policies and procedures with regard to sexual harassment and the organisational norms and culture.
Other civil society organisations may want to follow suit.
As a group of civil society lawyers wrote in a recent Daily Maverick op-ed: “We call on our sector to interrogate the ‘beyond reproach’ disposition and to disabuse themselves of the notion that our sector is somehow immune to sexual harassment, racism and other abuses of power. It is these unchecked exercises of power, in the form of white privilege and patriarchy, that result in the toxic environment being unearthed at Equal Education,” wrote Basetsana Koitsioe, Amanda Rinquest, Elgene Roos, Thabang Pooe, Thandeka Kathi and Wandisa Phama.
Rosenthal said that, for civil society to function effectively, these issues must be addressed. “In the days to come, much will be said about the tragedy of the fall of great leaders in civil society. We all know how desperately this country needs good leaders; to criticise those who stand tall seems sacrilegious. But I don’t want to talk about that tragedy. I want us to talk instead about the tragedy of what might have been, if this organisation had been different.
“Not for South Africa, not for education but for the individual young people who walked through the doors of Equal Education in Khayelitsha and were given hope that their lives could be different.”
https://mg.co.za/article/2018-06-01-00-ngo-grapples-with-toxic-culture
-
How reporting on sexual harassment can become an ethical quagmire
Jun 1, 2018 | Daily Maverick
By Rebecca Davis
While the West has been gripped and horrified by #MeToo revelations since the movement went viral in October 2017, it seemed to take a while for South Africa to catch up. With the exception of singer Jennifer Ferguson’s rape charge against football administrator Danny Jordaan, there was a period when the campaign’s direct influence locally seemed to be restricted to anecdotal experiences shared on social media. Now that’s changing – and with it comes a whole raft of challenges for journalists and the public.
There’s an argument to be made that South Africa has never not been in a #MeToo moment. A country where a former president was tried for rape cannot be said to have not been reckoning with sexual violence and toxic gender relations for quite some time.
Indeed, it’s possible that a reason why the #MeToo movement seemed to fail to gain traction in South Africa in the same way as it had in the USA initially is because accusations of sexual misconduct against powerful men are nothing new here, and never required a hashtag to be brought to public consciousness.
Yet in recent months, something has shifted. City Press has published a series of #MeToo exposés dealing with men in the creative industries, including film director Khalo Matabane and art curator Mark Coetzee. The Mail & Guardian has attracted a mixture of plaudits and concern for its reporting on sexual harassment allegations involving top male leaders at civil society organisation Equal Education.
At Daily Maverick, meanwhile, at least three #MeToo tip-offs have landed in our inboxes within a single week. There is a sense that South Africa’s #MeToo moment has arrived, and that it is the responsibility of local journalists to follow the example of our American peers and expose the sexual harassment all too often hidden behind the doors of corporates, NGOs, and creative studios – rather than just political offices.
But as we are rapidly learning, this is not straightforward stuff.
For one thing, none of the tip-offs Daily Maverick has received thus far has been brought to us by the victims of sexual harassment themselves. Instead, they have been reported by concerned outsiders: people within the same industry, for instance, who have caught wind of what they perceive as an injustice and wish to see it exposed.
There is technically nothing wrong with this – much news gets broken in this way. In the case of sexual violence or sexual harassment, however, it is generally held that the privacy and needs of victims be respected as much as possible. When it comes to a perceived sexual harassment cover-up in the workplace, for instance, it is sometimes the case that the desire to keep things quiet stems not from the perpetrator or his employer, but the complainant.
Should a journalist proceed with such a story in the wider public interest, but potentially at the expense of the anonymity of the victim? Even when names are not explicitly printed, it doesn’t take long in a society like ours for details to spread unofficially.
And the reasons why women (or men) might seek to keep their sexual harassment complaints under the radar are not hard to fathom: we know that they face the possibility of personal intimidation, the questioning of their motives and history, and the threat of attracting a reputation as a “difficult” employee.
Then there is the question of the motives of those who seek to bring allegations of injustice to light. In all journalism, these motives have to be scrutinised – even when dealing with as outrageous an abuse of power as sexual harassment. One of the factors which has made the Mail & Guardian reporting on Equal Education controversial has been the suggestion that one of the journalists involved had a personal axe to grind.
But the flipside of this is that an atmosphere of intimidation can be created in which journalists or whistle-blowers become fearful of exposing genuine wrongdoing due to the potential personal backlash. On Wednesday, a local group called the NGO Feminist Caucus released a statement expressing “grave concern” at the victimising of the Mail & Guardian journalist who broke the Equal Education story, warning that it played into the hands of those attempting to maintain a “culture of silence” in the NGO sector. This is a real concern.
When reporting on abuses of power in the NGO sector in particular, journalists also have to be prepared to withstand the sometimes weighty consequences of their reporting in the current climate. In the case of Equal Education – an NGO which inarguably does valuable work in the education sector – two donors have reportedly already suspended funding.
This is not a surprising response, when it comes to international funders worried about reputational risk. More questionable, however, was the Western Cape Education Department’s immediate suspension of Equal Education’s work in Western Cape schools (a decision since walked back, pending an investigation). In that instance, it is impossible to ignore the Western Cape government’s historically fraught relationship with the NGO for reasons completely unconnected to the sexual harassment scandal.
A question that also needs to be asked by both journalists and the wider society is as follows: What is the appropriate punishment for someone in a position of power who has abused their trust? What should happen to such a person – and this bit is crucial – beyond being held accountable by the relevant laws or internal disciplinary proceedings?
This is a question Daily Maverick has been grappling with this week. We were brought a story about a senior attorney in a prominent human rights law NGO who had been found guilty of sexual harassment via an internal process, and subsequently allowed to resign. It was suggested to us that (a) he should not have been permitted to resign, and rather should have been dismissed in a highly public fashion; and (b) that he had subsequently been covertly rehired by the same NGO in a “consultant” capacity.
The second allegation was arguably the most concerning aspect of this case. The NGO in question acknowledged to us that there were rumours to this effect doing the rounds, but denied them.
The confusion, they said, arose from the fact that the attorney in question was continuing to act for clients in a high-profile social justice matter. But it was the clients who had insisted that the attorney be retained, due to his experience and skill, and the fact that he had taken on their case at a time when it seemed a lost cause. It was they, rather than the NGO, who were paying his legal fees.
As for the suggestion that he should have been dismissed rather than permitted to resign: the NGO says it dealt with the sexual harassment complaints swiftly, instituted disciplinary proceedings and found him guilty. The perpetrator indicated that if he was dismissed rather than being permitted to resign, he would launch a legal challenge. To take this route, said the NGO, would consume more of the “significant amounts of human and financial resources” the matter had already demanded.
This man could not be said to have escaped accountability. Disciplinary proceedings had been instituted against him by his employers, he had been found guilty, and lost his job.
Yet in some quarters, this will not be considered enough. A more public shaming will be felt appropriate: to “send a message” that such abuse in a particular sector will not be tolerated. A feminist activist suggested to me that what some people want in these cases at the moment is effectively a “social death” for the perpetrator in question – and a professional death as well.
In an op-ed published by Daily Maverick earlier this week, it was evident that NGO Sonke Gender Justice was also grappling with this issue.
“Do we have a legal and ethical obligation to issue an announcement and name the person found guilty in a disciplinary hearing so they don’t move on to another job in the social justice sector and harass people there too?” Sonke Gender Justice leaders wrote.
“Should we track where someone convicted of harassment works and alert any new employer to their prior misconduct?”
Implicit in these questions is the possibility that a harasser can never reform his ways, and will continue to repeat his abuse in each new position. The potential for rehabilitation – once a central tenet of social justice thinking – appears to be increasingly dismissed.
What role should the media play in a climate like this? For too long powerful men have escaped both scrutiny and accountability for wrongdoing, and few of us would want to be complicit in helping to shield and protect perpetrators of abuse.
Yet in situations where workplace processes have already harshly punished someone for sexual harassment, are there compelling reasons for journalists to pile on social opprobrium by bringing that story into the public glare?
These are difficult questions. As journalist Pearlie Joubert wrote in a powerful op-ed on Daily Maverickrecently, reporting about sexual abuse in some ways makes reporting on corruption look like a piece of cake. But they are questions which have to be considered and debated – in the interests of ethical journalism, but also in the interests of social justice.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-06-01-how-reporting-on-sexual-harassment-can-become-an-ethical-quagmire/#.WxD5xUiFNm8
-
LRC allows 'harasser' to resign
Jun 1, 2018 | Mail & Guardian
By Rumana Akoob
The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) has allowed an alleged sexual harasser to resign without public censure — despite an independent investigation upholding the evidence of his accusers.
Henk Smith, an attorney who joined the LRC in 1991, was formally accused of sexual harassment by two women in 2017. A disciplinary hearing convened by the centre accepted “in totality” the evidence of both of them “in relation to the sexual harassment allegations”. It recommended that Smith be fired.
Smith denies all the allegations against him as “baseless”.
The LRC did not implement the recommendation of the disciplinary panel, instead allowing Smith to resign. He continues to work in public interest law.
In response to questions from the Mail & Guardian, the LRC said: “Notwithstanding the accusations for which he was found guilty, Mr Smith served as an attorney for 27 years at the LRC and served his clients diligently and was highly regarded by them. [The executive committee] felt that this should be taken into consideration — among other factors — in allowing him to resign.”
The LRC also said that it wanted to avoid further legal costs that may accrue, given the likelihood that Smith would contest a potential dismissal. The LRC said it did not inform Smith’s clients that he had been found guilty of sexually harassing women. “They were advised of his immediate resignation and that another attorney would be dealing with their matter,” it said.
Smith then took the LRC to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, claiming constructive dismissal. A settlement was reached, but according the CCMA rules this is confidential unless otherwise agreed by both parties.
'A reputation for harassment’
The LRC is one of the largest public interest law firms in the country, established in 1979 by Felicia Kentridge and former Constitutional Court judge Arthur Chaskalson. Smith is a prominent lawyer in his field, having made a name for himself on land and mining cases.
Two women the M&G spoke to alleged sexual harassment by Smith dating back more than a decade. “Debra” said that she was harassed by Smith in the early 2000s. She was not one of the complainants in the 2017 investigation. She agreed to be quoted under a pseudonym.
“It is the holding of hands, the massaging of shoulders at the end of a difficult day. You think it is off, but am I making a big deal out of nothing? By the time you realise it is sexually overt, it has gotten to a point where he feels it is appropriate to put his hands under your clothes …
“We all have in common this idea that [this consists] of, in many ways, grooming. As junior black women, you are looking up to a man who is taking the time and interest to mentor you, to bring you into big, important cases and have you work on them,” she said.
Debra said the LRC’s working environment discouraged women from speaking out. “I was warned about Henk by another woman when I started; I was told to lock my door when we went on an office trip,” she said.
The independent panel found that Smith had a reputation in the organisation for sexual harassment. It included testimony from one complainant that “[Smith] was known for this behaviour”, and found it was an indictment of the LRC that “young women coming into the LRC have been forewarned about [Smith’s] behaviour and it has been allowed to continue for what appears to be a considerable period of time”.
In one of the incidents investigated by the panel, Smith allegedly requested a “private viewing in the bathroom of a part of her body”.
During the disciplinary hearing, Smith argued that the complainants were not sexually harassed but rather that they were the ones interested in pursuing sexual relations with him. In response to questions from the M&G, Smith denied “the accusations of impropriety” that were levelled against him.
Speaking on his behalf, Smith’s “close friend and colleague”, attorney Richard Spoor, said: “The allegations are not consistent with his record and proven commitment to human rights and social justice … Henk disputes the findings that were made against him. Henk chose to resign rather than continue with a process that left him drained, both emotionally and financially. The interests of his family weighed heavily in his decision.”
Spoor added: “Henk continues to practise as a lawyer and to serve the interests of his clients who have retained his services. The LRC does not fund his work.
“The M&G references a number of new allegations that have not been raised before. These new allegations are also denied … Henk is understandably disappointed to have his good name and reputation tarnished by the baseless allegations made against him.”
Spoor added that the LRC had appointed an independent consultant from the Women’s Legal Centre to conduct an “extensive and exhaustive investigation” into Smith’s conduct. “This is, however, the first time that these new allegations are brought to Henk’s attention.”
The disciplinary hearing found that Smith showed no sign of remorse, and strongly recommended that he be dismissed. “Mr [Smith] is in a position of seniority and power, and our courts have confirmed that sexual harassment of young, vulnerable employees by senior management warrants dismissal … What does it say to young black women who are employed as candidate attorneys and researchers and junior staff at the LRC’s office?”
The findings were written by the chair of the investigating panel, senior counsel Nazreen Bawa. Despite the recommendation for his dismissal, Smith was allowed to resign.
The LRC did not publicise the findings of the independent investigation to staff. And it was not a unanimous decision to sever professional ties with him: according to the minutes of a board meeting, a board member said that, “in principle and under certain conditions, she would not be opposed” to the possibility of a “ongoing working relationship”.
‘No support offered to us’
“Thando” — also not her real name — was one of the complainants who prompted the 2017 investigation into Smith’s behaviour. She said she felt let down by the LRC, which “did nothing” to protect the women who were speaking out against Smith.
She said that during the hearing, she was subjected to a gruelling cross-examination that felt like a “criminal trial”. In addition, the complainants were not given any financial support to help with legal fees.
However, the LRC said they were given legal assistance organised by the Women’s Legal Centre and were offered counselling. The LRC was not itself able to assist because “the difficulty was that the complainants indicated that they did not trust the exco [executive committee] to safeguard their interests”.
Thando said she was especially disappointed by the organisation’s national director, Janet Love, whom she accused of being “absent” throughout the process.
“There was no support offered to us and everything the organisation did was to accommodate Henk. Simple things like protecting witnesses were not done. Janet must have known, because this has been happening for over 15 years,” Thando said.
Debra agrees that Love did not do nearly enough. “She [Love] is an extremely powerful figure in the sector and organisation. Her absence implied that she didn’t support us and, more importantly, it looked like she was supporting him,” Debra said.
Love said she was only made aware of the sexual harassment allegations in February 2017. She denies that she failed to support the complainants: “There is no truth in this allegation. I was shocked to hear of the allegations and more shocked that other staff members in the LRC had been made aware of this, and had not brought it to my attention.
“From the day I was informed about the allegations of sexual misconduct, I have unwaveringly insisted that all efforts be made to enable those affected to come forward.” She said, because the women had expressed a lack of trust in senior management, “I did not see it as appropriate to reach out”.
Neither Debra nor Thando still works at the LRC. Smith has established a new legal practice, Henk Smith and Associates. “Smith got to pick up exactly where he left off on all his cases. We all had to leave our jobs and now must worry about people finding out [about the abuse],” said Debra.
https://mg.co.za/article/2018-06-01-00-lrc-allows-harasser-to-resign#.WxEleEVWSH8.twitter
Traditional Media Coverage
Add recipients
Suggested