Justice needs safe work spaces
It is impossible to imagine equality without women being able to speak out
In the past weeks, many voices in South Africa have demanded that we focus on what it means to tell our own stories of sexual harassment. How do we explain the experience without evoking responses about how lovable the harasser is? How do we ask for support, or justice, without being told that the truth has the capacity to annihilate a whole organisation? How do we tell a story that is attuned to the complexities of life? How do we endure what happens after the story is told: the unexpected anger of strangers, being named as a victim, being forgotten, distorted, dismissed?
The amazing thing is that throughout South Africa’s histories of struggle, women have told their own stories of being sexually harassed by men, especially in the workplace. So vocal were these voices in union organising of the early 1980s that labour federation Cosatu, at its 1985 inaugural congress, explicitly committed itself to fighting sexual harassment.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s policies, vocabularies and the recognition of sexual harassment as a serious form of violence grew.
In the case of Media24 vs Grobler in 2005, the Supreme Court of Appeal emphasised that companies or organisations have “vicarious liability” for any sexual harassment experienced by workers.
In the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct and institutional failure in nongovernmental organisation Equal Education, Lisa Vetten and Redi Tlhabi spoke to Eusebius McKaiser after he interviewed activist Zackie Achmat on his Radio 702 show. McKaiser acknowledged that the interview with Achmat, a former chairperson of Equal Education’s board, had rattled him.
Achmat’s declaration of love for Doron Isaacs (who has been identified by women at Equal Education as a sexual harasser), his refusal to acknowledge the meaning of his own power as a highly influential man and his use of a survivor’s gang-rape story to impugn her credibility more than rattled some of us.
Achmat’s responses to McKaiser’s questions about Equal Education’s 2011 sexual harassment inquiry and multiple allegations against several men in the organisation were shocking. It was tough to regain one’s balance after hearing them.
If Achmat’s position is any indication of what some women in the organisation, and perhaps others like it, have had to suffer, the fact that their stories of sexual harassment have been voiced at all is testament to their courage.
Vetten and Tlhabi spoke clearly to issues that listeners might be wrestling with. Vetten noted the complexity of consent, whereas Tlhabi explored how contemporary stories of sexual harassment evoke those of previous generations and of the need for solidarity across contexts.
Before hashtags such as #MeToo, there was a political history of struggle. It is important to remember that we stand on the shoulders of our grandmothers. Tlhabi and Vetten were uncompromising about the long history of tolerance for sexual violence on the left in South Africa.
McKaiser said he felt sorry for Achmat but no one pointed out the true weirdness of McKaiser’s confession. Was it compassion? The suppression of rage? Something more complex?
The discussion also covered patriarchal bullying. In the moment of being bullied there is the disbelief that it is happening. After the event, the survivor has to decide whether to challenge the abuser through institutional processes.
Sexual violence is deeply linked to sexual and reproductive justice. It is impossible to imagine reproductive justice without women’s clear ability to make choices and act on them.
When women cannot make the choice to complain and be accorded due process in the workplace because they will be exposed to harm and risky processes, we are all compromised.
Sexual harassment — in schools, workplaces, hospitals, religious institutions and public spaces — compromises women’s self-confidence, security and power. Most significantly their power of choice weakens. That’s the point of sexual harassment; as a persistent and systemic culture of violence, it weakens women’s power and place in society.
The idea of social justice activism becomes a lie when its organising spaces are abusive. Allegations of sexual harassment can be devastating to an organisation but how people in organisations treat those allegations can be just as damaging.
We find it ludicrous to suggest that a story of sexual harassment has the power to annihilate people or organisations in which it occurs. Annihilation is something that happened to Palestinians on the Gaza border a week ago, and to Eudy Simelane, who was assassinated by homophobic thugs.
On the contrary, we believe coming out with stories of sexual harassment has the power to liberate an organisation and to render it more just. The trick is not to respond in a defensive manner but to reflect and to listen very carefully to what is being said both about the current moment and its historical roots.
Whether the issue concerns allegations of sexual harassment, racial violence or hate speech, it is in how we respond to the allegations that we are tested, not by the allegations themselves.