GroundUp reports that it has been a long legal battle for a woman who was sexually harrassed twice by a municipal employee, when she went to book for, and then when she went to write, her driver’s licence test.

But, the Labour Appeal Court (LAC) has now finally ruled that he must be dismissed. Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality employee Justinus Mabetoa was fired after a disciplinary hearing for sexual harassment. He appealed against the ruling to the SA Local Government Bargaining Council, which found him guilty but said dismissal was too harsh. The municipality then appealed to the Labour Court, but the court ordered that Mabetoa be reinstated. The municipality appealed again, to the LAC, which has now ordered that he indeed be fired. “Sexual harassment committed by an official employed in the public sector, in the course of the provision of public services to a member of the public, constitutes serious misconduct insofar as it amounts to an abuse of a public position of authority. Where such harassment is committed more than once and directed at the same member of the public this makes it all the more serious,” Acting LAC Judge Kate Savage ruled in a recent judgment. The incidents were reported to the municipality by a woman, who in June 2015 went to the vehicle licensing centre to book her learner’s test. She wrote the test at the end of August. On that day she reported to a supervisor that Mabetoa had sexually harassed her on both occasions. She said on the first occasion, he had suggested he would take down her number, and made sexual remarks, such as “I look like I taste nice in bed”. When she returned to write her test, Mabetoa again made sexual remarks, suggesting that he would go to her home, and when he took her fingerprints he rubbed her hand in an “uncomfortable way”.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tania Broughton at GroundUp

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