BARRY STREEK, Cape Town | Friday
OUSTED Western Cape MEC and former member of the Democratic Alliance, Freda Adams, has upped the stakes in her sexual harassment battle with DA mayoral candidate Peter Marais, providing details of his raunchy and unsolicited advances.
She has now signed a sworn affidavit giving particulars and dates of her claims that Marais, her former ministerial colleague, tried to seduce her a number of times.
She alleges that he said to her “You know, Freda, if I look at you and I smell your perfume then I could just undress you.”
She adds in the affidavit that while she and Marais were attending the national caucus of the New National Party in Ganzekraal on August 13 1999, Marais said: “I could lick you the whole night long from your toes right up to your head.”
Adams’s detailed affidavit follows Marais’s repeated denials of her charges, and his challenge to her to provide details to substantiate her allegations. But Marais and Western Cape Premier Gerald Morkel have emphatically rejected her claims, with Morkel even going as far to suggest Adams needs “treatment”.
Marais has vowed to take legal action against Adams after the December 5 local government elections. His aides say she only starting making public claims against him after she was rejected as the DA candidate for mayor of the Cape Town unicity.
Adams, on the other hand, has issued summons for defamation against Morkel for R500 000 and against Marais for R1-million.
Adams claims in the affidavit that when she told Morkel on August 11 last year that Marais was “always making filthy jokes about wanting to sleep with me”, the premier had only responded: “Ag, Freda, you know they are only making jokes. I suppose they are only making jokes and they are just being men. You must remember that you are part of the big league now. They only behaving as normal men would.”
On September 8, after she became upset after an incident with the NNP’s chief whip, Marais attempted to comfort her and “he hugged me but in doing so pressed his body against mine in a manner which made me feel extremely uncomfortable … I felt his actions were unwanted … I also said that only my husband could comfort me in the manner in which he was endeavouring to do so.
“At this point he said that I shouldn’t worry and that everything would be okay. He then tried to kiss me on my lips. I pulled away but he still managed to kiss me on my cheek.”