Mbenenge's legal counsel tries to dispel claims he sent complainant photos of his private parts
High Court secretary, Andiswa Mengo, testified that she received a crude and explicit photo from the judge president exposing himself to her.
Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge at the Judicial Conduct Tribunal during the sexual harassment matter him. Picture: @OCJ_RSA/X
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC DETAILS OF A SEXUAL NATURE.
JOHANNESBURG - Legal counsel for Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge has sought to dispel allegations that he sent a junior staffer in his division photos of his private parts.
High Court secretary, Andiswa Mengo, testified that she received a crude and explicit photo from the judge president exposing himself to her.
However, advocate Muzi Sikhakhane probed Mengo on the matter, to which she admitted that she did not personally know what it looked like.
Mengo is under cross-examination before the Judicial Conduct Tribunal in Rosebank, Johannesburg probing the allegations she has levelled against the top judge.
She accuses the jurist of making unwanted sexual advances towards her between 2021 and 2022.
In her statement, Mengo alleges that Mbenenge sent her an image of his private parts, which she says he then deleted but not before she had sight of it.
However, Sikhakhane, who is representing the judge before the Judicial Conduct Tribunal, probed Mengo about how she knew that what was depicted in the image belonged to the senior judge.
"You've got to have seen it, known it to identify the picture that it's his, not just a picture."
Mengo provided the following explanation to the question: "I think we are in agreement with the part where it states that I do not know it, I've never seen it, I don’t know it. However, if he had sent me a picture where would he then have gotten the picture of somebody else if it was not his."
The judge president has previously disputed the allegations that he sent the junior crude and explicit images.