The DA must walk the talk
The DA has decided to strip its sexpest Eastern Cape chief whip of his position in the Bhisho legislature, but has retained him as a parliamentarian.
Edmund van Vuuren was also fined R20 000 for the sexual harassment of a junior staffer at his Bhisho office. This fine will be donated to a non-government organisation, while Van Vuuren has also been instructed to get professional help.
For a party like the DA which models itself as a paragon of morality and good governance, the sentence is not only a slap on the wrist but a demonstration of the opposition party’s hypocrisy especially on the issue of women abuse. Keeping a sexpest within its ranks is a direct contradiction of what the party purports to be.
DA federal chairman James Selfe said the disgraced Van Vuuren would have to undergo “rehabilitation for his evident problem with women”.
Telling him to get professional help is the right move, but to keep Van Vuuren as an MPL and a DA member leaves a somewhat bitter taste in the mouth.
The DA’s federal executive had initially decided to expel him from the party after they overruled a decision by the federal legal commission, which had recommended that the DA heavyweight’s membership be suspended for a year. But Van Vuuren successfully appealed his expulsion during a prolonged disciplinary process that lasted six months.
The ruling, which is final and binding, will set a bad precedent for the opposition party. Because the DA does not have a sexual harassment policy, future offenders will have to be treated the same way and only get demoted while still remaining as party members. By letting Van Vuuren keep his membership, the DA will inadvertently discourage other sexual harassment victims from coming forward, because they know that their abusers will merely walk away with a demotion and pay a small fine.
The flip-flopping by the DA once again shines the spotlight on the party and how it deals with sexual harassment cases.
Regardless of how the party justifies their decision, the bottom line is that they protect women abusers.
It did the same thing last year when its MP in the National Assembly, Archibald Figlan was found guilty of the same offence. Figlan had placed his victim’s hands on his genitals during a protest march – telling her to “picket here”.
He was merely fined R12 000 – which he was told to pay in equal instalments of
R1 000 a month – and still kept his job.
We live in a society perverted by the sexual abuse of women and children, and what the Van Vuuren decision shows is that the DA is not serious about fighting sexual abuse. If their rulings on the Van Vuuren and Figlan cases are anything to go by, then frankly the party is on the side of the abusers.
The DA has not only failed the women who reported their cases to the party, but every other victim of sexual harassment and abuse. By keeping quiet and not speaking out strongly against sexual abuse within the party’s ranks, the women in the DA are equally complicit to the abuse.