Judicial Conduct Tribunal postpones hearing for Judge President Selby Mbenenge

The Judicial Conduct Tribunal dealing with sexual harassment and misconduct complaints against Eastern Cape High Court Judge President (JP) Selby Mbenenge has hit another delay after proceedings were postponed on Tuesday. 

JP Mbenenge is accused of sending complainant Andiswa Mengo untoward WhatsApp chats over an extended period and in one incident it is alleged that he asked Mengo to engage in a sexual act in his chambers. 

Mengo lodged the complaints in December 2022.

Tuesday morning the hearing was scheduled to deal with the testimony of gender expert Lisa Vetten but following a discussion in chambers, retired Justice Bernard Ngoepe announced that the Tribunal would be postponed to allow Mbenenge’s legal team to properly prepare. 

This comes after Ngoepe made a ruling that they, erring on the side of caution, would allow the testimony of Vetten to be heard and would later decide the relevance of it. 

Mbenenge’s legal team objected to Vetten going ahead with her testimony on the grounds that the summary of her evidence was not delivered on time.

The matter was set down for further Tribunal hearing from June 30 to July 11.

Making the ruling, Ngoepe said: “We should rather allow evidence, even though there are arguments about its relevance, allow it nevertheless to be given. We allow it to be given because we are confident that if it is irrelevant, we will be able to hold accordingly at any time, even at the end of that evidence, we will say that it is irrelevant and put it aside. 

“Contrast that with a situation where you exclude evidence which might well be relevant and material. We think in that case, we would have erred. Our resolve is that we should allow her to give her evidence and there would be no prejudice to anybody,” said Ngoepe. 

Up to this week, the Tribunal has heard the testimony of a number of witnesses called by evidence leader, Salome Scheepers and which had to be tested by both counsel to Mengo and Mbenenge. 

This included the testimony of former Judicial Service Commission secretary Kutlwano Moretlwe’s version of events, which, in part, dealt with the misplaced initial sexual harassment complaint. The initial complaint was handed to the former Chief Justice Raymond Zondo on December 12, 2022 however, according to Moretlwe, this complaint was misplaced and Zondo had contacted Moretlwe to inform her of the incident.

Another witness, forensic and legal linguist and researcher, Dr Zakeera Docrat, confirmed that the context in which emojis were sent to Mengo by JP Mbenenge depicted sexual acts. 

A colleague of Mengo, Ntomboxolo Jobela testified that Mengo confided in her about the messages sent to her by JP Mbenenge and shared with her the explicit pictures she had allegedly received from him. 

Cape Times