Judge lambasts Liberty for not taking action against sex-pest manager

FINANCIAL services giant Liberty had the advantage of knowing one of its managers was a sex pest, but did nothing.

After failing to deal with an insurance clerk’s harassment claim against her boss, the company subjected her to “unwarranted and unjustified secondary harassment” during three days of “unacceptably harsh, cruel and vicious cross-examination” in the Labour Court in Johannesburg.

In a Labour Appeal Court ruling this week, Acting Judge Kate Savage said Liberty had “adopted precisely the response that the Employment Equity Act seeks to prevent” by failing to recognise the seriousness of Andrew Mosesi’s misconduct or resolve the employee’s complaint.

She threw out Liberty’s appeal and said it should pay the woman R250 000 compensation within 10 days, and her costs.

Mosesi was a Liberty regional manager, based in Pretoria, when he sexually harassed the clerk four times.

“She took the first incident up directly with him, on the basis that she took the view that ‘he was just being a man’, and considered the incident resolved,” said the judge. However:

In May 2009, when she arrived for “training” with Mosesi, she was the only employee there. “[He] made unwarranted comments, touched her body, massaged her shoulders and stood too close to her. She asked him to stop but he did not”;

Later that month, while loading office supplies into Mosesi’s car, “he inappropriately touched her body and rubbed his body against hers so she could feel he was aroused. She told him to stop but he pushed her against a pillar and forced his tongue into her mouth. [The woman] testified that she felt like she was being raped. She refused his offer to take her home and went to the office bathroom to wash her face and mouth”; and

Mosesi sat next to the woman at her desk. “He placed his hand on her leg, moving it steadily higher. When she told him to stop he laughed.”

The judge said the woman feared she might lose her job if she reported the matter, but when she resigned that September she told her team leader, Sylvia Nyathi, about the harassment. She ended up withdrawing her resignation, but her complaint was not investigated.

She resigned again the following month and referred a dispute to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, which ad- vised her to go to the Labour Court.

There, under cross-examination, Liberty’s counsel accused her of being “incapable of telling the same story” and being “all over the place as to what actually happened”, said the judge.

In its appeal papers, Liberty said the woman was “at best psychologically disturbed and at worst a pathological liar”. But the judge said it was “remarkable” that the company still denied the harassment allegations “without direct evidence in support of such a denial”.

Liberty’s response to the woman’s complaint had been “at best superficial”, and the absence of an investigation was “glaring”.

Mosesi was suspended but later reinstated. According to his LinkedIn profile, he left Liberty almost two years later and became CEO of Atlie Football Club. Since June 2014 he has worked for the Department of Science and Technology in Pretoria. He is secretary of the ANC’s Gauteng task team on suburbs.

He pushed her against a pillar and forced his tongue into her mouth