False+accusers+must+be+held+accountable,+Editorial,+Weekender

Business Day Weekender, Johannesburg, 20 January 2007
=False sexual harassment accusers must be held accountable=


 * Editorial**

The South African state of mind appears to be easily given over to emotional outbursts, unsubstantiated claims and just plain prejudice

THIS week, sexual harassment claims against University of KwaZulu-Natal council chairman Vincent Maphai and vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba were found to be baseless. Maphai and Makgoba are enormously respected people against whom you might expect allegations of this type to be treated with circumspection. But yet, the university was forced to jump through all kinds of procedural hoops, at great cost to the reputations of the two men and disruption to the university. The question now is whether too much credence was placed on the claims and what kind of sanction is appropriate against people who make false accusations.

There is a broader question, too: is there a tendency in SA to jump to conclusions too quickly? At the risk of generalising isolated incidents, emotional outbursts, unsubstantiated claims, and just plain prejudice and paranoia remain sad components of the South African state of mind.

As damaging as they were, the allegations against Maphai and Makgoba pale compared with allegations made recently against four Rawsonville farmers. A young woman last year falsely testified that four farmers had raped her and had brutally beaten a young boy. The case played into all kinds of popular stereotypes; thuggish Afrikaner farmers, exploitative and undoubtedly racist, using their position of power to bully and rape the poor and the helpless.

The case became something of a cause célèbre in Western Cape. An organisation called Women on Farms, the Farmworkers Union and Cosatu all jumped on board, with Cosatu Western Cape provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich upping the ante by saying the incident justified farm invasions.

However, on investigation it turned out that the farmers all had cast-iron alibis. The young woman later tearfully acknowledged she had been pressured into the allegation by local shebeen owners, who had their eye on the farms. “The people from Women on Farms arrived here and they (the shebeen owners) told them the story. All I had to do was agree," she is reported as having said.

But from here things get even sadder. Far from backing down, Women on Farms director Fatima Shabodien described a call for “an unqualified apology" by Western Cape agriculture MEC Kobus Dowry as a “declaration of war". Crucially she made the comment that the lack of evidence did not mean the rape never happened.

Shabodien’s response suggests a mind-numbing, willful blindness. Obviously, the rape of farmworkers does take place and tragically it is often difficult to prove. However, this was not a case of a lack of evidence but a surfeit of evidence, all pointing to innocence. To pretend there was none reveals an astounding bias and constitutes an injustice to the notion of truth.

And this is where the flaw in the South African mind-set vests: the notion that there is no truth except that which you can convince others to be the truth. However, truth, in the most part is not a subjective matter. At a certain point, after a certain amount of evidence is collected, the truth is obvious. But for some, that point only exists to the extent that it confirms their prejudices.

The lack of respect for evidence and investigation seems to infect SA without respect of gender, class or creed. The victims include former Scorpions boss Bulelani Ngcuka, who was falsely accused of being an apartheid spy; high court judge Siraj Desai; and, of course, the bizarre claim by none other than President Thabo Mbeki that three prominent businessmen were plotting his overthrow. Sadly, a duped press helps to compound the misery.

What needs to happen for South Africans to gain — or regain — a respect for the truth? Perhaps we simply need to develop a taste for scepticism. But more pertinently, those who make false accusations need to be held accountable for their lies. Every false sexual harassment charge diminishes the chances of a genuine sex pest being brought to justice — activists in this cause should know that.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/weekender.aspx?ID=BD4A363100**

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