Former University of South Africa (Unisa) professor Margaret Orr on Friday accepted a settlement of
R150 000 offered by university counsel chairman McCaps Motimele, accused of sexually harassing her.
The Johannesburg High Court heard how the 47-year-old woman was marginalised after laying a sexual harassment complaint against Motimele in 2000.
Orr originally asked the court to award her R650 000 in damages. Motimele’s answering papers deny the harassment.
The two parties settled for R150 000 on Friday. Judge Ismail Hussain also ordered that Motimele pay the legal costs for both parties in addition to the amount of R150 000.
Orr told the court that the sexual harassment began when Unisa was in the middle of transformation and she knew that if she laid a complaint she would be labelled ”racist”.
She said the other alternative, it seemed, was to have an affair and work herself further up the corporate ladder to top management.
She was at first afraid to tell her husband that Motimele had made certain sexual overtures to her which included a French kiss. Orr testified that she was now working at the University of Witwatersrand where she had been labelled as ”disabled” because she suffered from fits of depression.
Originally, according to her evidence, Orr put the advances down to ”whiskey” Motimele had consumed and would have accepted an apology, but she said the harassment went from bad to worse.
In the beginning there were hints that she might be able to climb the corporate ladder to top management, if she got to know Motimele better on a personal basis.
However, she laid an internal complaint against him and was not shortlisted for the position of Vice Principal: Academic and wondered ”if I was being punished for not playing the game”.
Months before she resigned in December 2000, the complaint was aired in the media. She testified that what she feared most happened — she was labelled a ”racist bitch”.
Her problems started on January 7, 2000 and she eventually resigned from the university on December 11 that year. Her resignation took effect from February 28, 2001.
This was when Unisa was at a delicate stage of transformation and suddenly she was afraid to leave her office at Unisa which she had originally felt was her second home, she said.
According to Orr, she was even more traumatised when at the end of eight months of investigation and evaluation, the commission investigating the complaint was unable to find a solution.
It recommended that the parties should seek their own individual legal recourse through the process of law, and she took the matter to court. – Sapa