Pretoria - Sexual harassment has no place in the South African working environment.
The legislature continuously makes the message clearer and louder by passing legislation designed to eradicate sexual harassment from the workplace, the Labour Court said in awarding a captain in the police R50 000 after she was sexually harassed.
The SAPS was ordered to pay this amount to the woman, who cannot be named, after it was found to have dragged its feet in investigating her claims that her superior was sexually harassing her.
Judge Zolashe Lallie commented that “sexual harassment is used, in most cases, by employers and employees entrusted with some level of authority to oppress, exploit and dominate those with less or no authority at all”.
“In this case, like in most cases, the victim of sexual harassment is a woman and the perpetrator is a man. Like all employees, women go to work to sell their skills and labour and to practise their professions to earn an income, not for the sexual pleasure of their employers or other employees, irrespective of the positions they hold,” she said.
The applicant told the court that during 2013 and 2014, her direct supervisor made sexual advances towards her.
She lodged her first formal grievance of sexual harassment against her superior in June 2015. She was told to report to another officer while the investigation was being undertaken into her complaints, which included that her superior “touched her breasts with his thumb on occasions, which made her uncomfortable”.
The investigation dragged its heels until the applicant reported it to the provincial head office. In June 2017, the Sexual Harassment Task Team took over the investigation. Her superior, however, continued to work in the same office as her.
The applicant reported that her first encounter with her superior was when she was working in the human resources environment. She always felt that he was in her private space and as a result she tried to avoid him at all costs.
In 2014, she was placed under his direct supervision and the harassment started. He came up from behind and put his arm around her shoulders and touched her breasts.
She said when she told him to stop this, he started victimising her by taking away responsibilities which would normally fall on her in terms of seniority.
A typist in the SAPS also testified she saw the officer touching the applicant on occasion, but she could not exactly see where.
The typist also said she heard him making inappropriate comments to the applicant, such as “he wanted to lift her up in his arms”.
When the investigations into her grievances came to nothing and she reported the matter to head office, the alleged sex pest was transferred to another division in September 2017.
In July 2018 she received a letter from the SAPS telling her that they were not going to take the matter further. It was stated in a report that, due to the lapse of time and extreme vagueness of the evidence, it would be a challenge to formulate charges against her superior.
The supervisor returned to the police station and the applicant was instructed to be transferred. Her subsequent letters of complaint to the superiors went unanswered so she lodged a dispute with the CCMA. This was later referred to the Labour Court for adjudication to determine whether she was treated unfairly.
Judge Lallie found that the time the SAPS took to investigate the applicant’s complaint was unreasonably long and that the steps taken to eliminate the sexual harassment were inadequate.
“Other than investigating the applicant’s complaint, removing the perpetrator from the work place for a year and making recommendations, no action was taken by the SAPS to eliminate the sexual harassment,” the judge said.
Pretoria News