Junior EFF employee gets boot for reporting assault
Party’s chief whip fingered for abuse
A junior member at the EFF office in North West claims that she lost her job for speaking out about her alleged assault by the party’s chief whip in the provincial legislature. Maggie Klaas, who worked as an administrator at the EFF’s office, said she was fired on Thursday.
Klaas said she was accused of bringing the name of the party into disrepute by talking about the alleged assault to the media.
In November, Klaas opened a case of assault with the police, accusing her direct manager Bungas Ntsangane of threatening to cut off her private parts before physically assaulting her. The two were allegedly fighting for an office key.
This, according to Klaas, happened in full view of other legislature members. Klaas said on Thursday she was shocked when she received a letter telling her that her contract has been terminated. She said she sought an explanation but the party management would not budge. She said she has been working for EFF for more than two years but had never experienced such hostility.
“They started treating me bad after I reported the incident to the police; they tried on several occasions to force me to drop the charges or face dismissal,” she said.
She said what Ntsangane did to her was wrong. “Instead of getting the support from the party after he assaulted me, I received a hostile treatment,” Klaas said. Provincial party spokesman Jerry Matebesi said Klaas was never forced to drop the case of alleged assault against Ntsangane. He said Klaas was dismissed for refusing to comply with a lawful instruction to attend a staff meeting.
He said Klaas also refused to work at the EFF’s provincial office when she was requested to do so to beef up the election machinery.
Matebesi said Klaas unlawfully disseminated information to the media about internal affairs of the EFF, thus bringing the party into disrepute since she was not authorised to speak to the media. He said Klaas behaved in a rude manner in front of other staff members during her meeting with head of human resources, Namhle Ncobo. “She screamed, banged the table and left the meeting while the head of HR was still addressing her,” Matebesi said. “Her inability to complete basic tasks like typing of a letter forced the HR department to consider capacity building programmes for her.”
But Klaas dismissed the allegations levelled against her. “They claim they fired me because I did not follow instructions. Yes, I refused to drop the charges .”
The case against Ntsangane has been postponed to November 13 by the Mmabatho magistrate’s court for investigation.