Skating on thin ice …
Advocate failed to go to work ‘because she didn’t know address’
● An advocate who claimed she was absent from work for six months because she did not know where her new office was has now found a spot in the unemployment queue.
Dineo Gomba, a senior legal adviser at Gauteng’s department of human settlements, was last seen at work in August last year. She was on annual leave when her office in the Bank of Lisbon building in the Johannesburg CBD was gutted by fire on September 4.
Despite her claims, Gomba’s social media suggests she enjoyed holidays and expensive lunch outings with family. She denied going on holiday when she was meant to be working and on Friday had taken down her Facebook page, which tells a different story. She said that it had given the wrong impression that she was doing well when she was not.
But though her employer fired her in her absence and claimed that stopping her salary was the only way to get her to show her face, Gomba maintains that all along she was “working from home”.
“It’s not possible for someone not to come to work for five months and still get paid,” she said.
Her social media accounts record various expensive lunches with relatives during her absence from work and a foray into the world of figure-skating, which led to her competing semi-professionally.
Representing herself in a Johannesburg labour court bid to have her dismissal declared wrongful and unfair, Gomba insisted the human settlements department had dropped the ball.
The court ruled in April that her dismissal was justified, a ruling she has vowed to take on appeal.
Responding to questions, Gomba claimed she had been victimised by the department and that its new offices were so unsuitable that she and many others were working from home.
Human settlements spokesperson Castro Ngobese said the department had followed due process before terminating Gomba’s contract. “Inevitably, it took longer due to adherence to labour relations and legal procedures,” he said.
The department showed the court WhatsApp messages sent to all employees after the fire, letting them know where their new offices would be. Despite these, it said, Gomba had failed to report for duty.
Officials also produced an e-mail sent to Gomba on February 15 explaining that her long absence was unacceptable and warning that a termination letter would follow.
A notice of termination was sent to her home on March 8.
In reply, Gomba said her laptop had been in the Bank of Lisbon building when the fire
I am a senior legal adviser, I wouldn’t fight this if I was wrong
Dineo Gomba
broke out so she did not have access to work e-mails. She said the letter terminating her service was sent to an address in Kimberley, not her home in Johannesburg.
“I have not lived there [in Kimberley] for years. I am on a work WhatsApp — why not just phone me?”
In her papers, Gomba said that while “absent” she had been e-mailing the chief of staff in the human settlements MEC’s office but his mailbox was full so he did not receive her messages. The official denied that his mailbox had been full.
The bedrock of her court challenge was that:
● The dismissal had caused her severe psychological trauma;
● She was on the brink of losing her home because she couldn’t afford to pay her bond;
● She was pregnant and the dismissal made her suffer from high blood pressure;
● She had no alternative remedies; and
● Her circumstances were exceptional. Ngobese would not comment on what Gomba had been paid during her absence.
Asked if she had received a December bonus despite not being at work, he said: “All entitlements that were due to her before her termination were paid.”
Labour court judge Edwin Tlhotlhalemaje was not impressed with Gomba’s urgent application, saying she had approached the court only on May 27, more than 11 weeks after being fired.
“In my view [she] hopelessly failed to display any sense of urgency … By the time [she] woke up … any measure of urgency that there was … gradually dissipated and had virtually evaporated into thin air,” he said.
Gomba said she would hear next week if her application to appeal against the decision would be approved.
“I am a senior legal adviser. I wouldn’t fight this if I was wrong,” she said.