Labour hearing clears teacher of rape charge

Evidence ‘too weak’ and pupil’s testimony ‘improbable’, Limpopo arbitrator finds

A TEACHER accused of raping a learner at her Limpopo home while her mother was away has been cleared at arbitration.

Ntsepeng Mookamedi, an Education Labour Relations Council arbitrator, found the evidence for the Limpopo Education Department’s case against teacher Mmaselaelo Ross Buthane too weak to warrant a guilty verdict.

Evidence that the department failed to lead in the arbitration included the J88 form, which would have detailed the medical evidence of the learner’s alleged rape.

Identified as Ms X for her protection, the 17-year-old learner testified that she reported the alleged rape at the Tomburke police station, and went to Witpoort Hospital for medical assessment and counselling.

She said that her mother and uncle took her to the police station and hospital some hours after the alleged sexual abuse.

It was common cause that Buthane found the learner at her home. He had gone there to deliver a birth certificate, as per the request of another learner related to Ms X.

Ms X testified that Buthane found her alone in the house and proposed a romantic relationship with her. She rejected the proposal and told him she was not interested in dating an older person.

But to her shock, Ms X further deposed, Buthane pushed her on to a couch and began to unzip his trousers. The “imposing figure” took off her underwear forcefully and raped her, she told arbitrator Mookamedi.

It was unclear why the matter was treated as a labour case and not a criminal one.

Mookamedi heard the matter at the Lephalale Magistrate’s Court, and later at the Education Department’s Waterberg district office. Ms X and her mother testified at the court.

Buthane, represented by Mpho Mokhithi Incorporated Attorneys, vehemently denied raping Ms X. He accused the Limpopo Education Department of having “preferred spurious acts of misconduct” against him that were not factually and materially proven.

Mookamedi found a range of grave flaws in the case against Buthane. Chief among these flaws was that two potential witnesses that were with Ms X before the alleged rape were not called to testify. “I also find Ms X’s testimony to have been characterised by internal and material contradictions because she testified during her evidence in chief … that Buthane raped her on January 9, 2019.

“However, during cross-examination Ms X testified that she does not associate Mr Buthane with her rape incident,” Mookamedi wrote in the ruling.

“I also find the oral testimony of Ms X to be incredible, because if it was indeed that soon after Buthane had allegedly finished raping her that Ms X reported such rape case at Tomburke police station as well as at Witpoort Hospital, the employer would have led documentary evidence in the form of a medical report detailing the extent of Buthane’s penetration … during the rape incident.

“Similarly, the employer would have presented documentary evidence in the form of a J88 form.

“To this end, I find the testimony of Ms X not only to be of poor probative evidentiary value, but also to be an improbable version that calls to be rejected in relation to the current inquiry,” Mookamedi concluded. He dismissed the case against the teacher.