Like most South Africans, I’m following the Madlanga commission with great interest, wanting to understand the extent and temporal scope of criminality, corruption and political interference in our country’s criminal justice system.
The recommendations that will come out of this commission and their enforcement will repair or further break this country as we know it.
And so, almost on a daily basis, I watch part of the proceedings and read analysis from different analysts, activists and academics to make sense of some of the issues that arise from it.
Most of these have been shocking, but none more so than the testimony of the former city manager of the City of Ekurhuleni, Dr Imogen Mashazi. Her testimony was an unthinkable and personal betrayal to me, not only as a young woman but also as a former employee of the municipality under her administrative leadership.
In her testimony, Mashazi claimed that the suspended former chief of the Ekurhuleni metropolitan police department (EMPD), Jabulani Mapiyeye, had allegedly been a known sexual predator in the municipality.
She told the commission that she had heard from victims from as far back as 2016 that they were being sexually assaulted by their seniors, including Mapiyeye.
Responding to questions as to what actions she had taken against Mapiyeye and other senior officials who were allegedly committing sexual harassment and rape, Mashazi stated that she had created a programme that empowered and promoted female officers and made them understand that they were not sexual objects but were equal to men.
She insisted that she could do nothing because the victims did not file official complaints to her office.
Mashazi’s statement is dangerous and deeply personal to me. Between February 2019 and July 2023, I worked as a senior specialist researcher in the City of Ekurhuleni, initially in the office of the executive mayor and later, the office of the whip of council.
During this time, I encountered Mapiyeye and other EMPD senior officials on numerous occasions, as they often held meetings with the then mayor, who was my boss.
Mashazi’s statements indicate that for years, I and many other women in the municipality were knowingly exposed to alleged perpetrators and that with every encounter with Mapiyeye and other senior EMPD officials, we risked being raped and sexually abused.
Not once were we warned about the potential dangers that Mashazi was evidently aware of. She knowingly put our lives in danger while seeming to be a beacon of women’s empowerment as the first woman to be appointed city manager in the metro’s history.
Mashazi’s argument that she couldn’t launch an investigation because no formal complaint was brought to her is unthinkable. As the accounting officer in the metro, Mashazi had both an ethical and legal duty to act against such serious allegations.
She should have involved the national department of social development and other organisations to help facilitate a process in which the reasonably terrified women could be offered psychosocial and institutional support to come forward.
The law also allows her to institute the investigation even without formal complaints, especially as she claims the sexual abuse of women by EMPD senior officials was systemic. She failed to do this, opting instead to maintain relations with these officials.
Her testimony at the commission was not informed by principle but by her own self-serving interests after she was implicated in the corruption and rot involving alleged criminal kingpin Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala.
Mashazi, in her attempts to clear her name, exposed her complicity in the abuse endured by women in the City of Ekurhuleni under her leadership.
The betrayal cuts deep for those of us who now sit here with the trauma of wondering how many close encounters we may have had with perpetrators that we referred to as “our leadership” for years. It’s unconscionable!
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