South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will co-operate with the Commission for Gender Equality on queries about controversial ambassador Norman Mashabane, foreign affairs said on Tuesday.
”The minister of Foreign Affairs has been in contact with the Gender Commission, and will continue to co-operate with it to find an amicable resolution of the matter,” departmental spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said.
”In this regard, relevant documents as requested by the commission are in the process of being finalised.”
Commission legal department head, Mmathare Mashao, said on Monday the organisation would subpoena Dlamini-Zuma if she did not meet a deadline to reply to queries about Mashabane.
She said she was unsure what the deadline was, as another staff member was dealing with the case file, but said the commission had already once extended an initial deadline that expired more than three months ago.
The commission was seeking answers from Dlamini-Zuma to a range of questions about Mashabane, the ambassador to Indonesia, who she cleared earlier this year when he appealed against guilty findings on a series of departmental sexual harassment charges.
Mashao said it was possible the long-awaited replies were on their way to the commission.
”Her office communicated with our chairperson on Friday regarding some issues on this, but we haven’t received anything in writing yet,” she said.
”My understanding is that according to the communication… it sounds like it’s on the way.”
She said the commission was in fact told three months ago that a response was ready, and waiting for the minister’s signature.
”Maybe there were things that needed to be changed,” she said. She said a subpoena was standard procedure when a respondent did not reply to the commission.
At the weekend, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on the matter, Sandra Botha, accused the CGE of not following its own code of conduct in its handling of the matter, by not acting in an efficient or responsive manner.
”Hopefully their consideration of a subpoena to… Dlamini-Zuma will be the turning point in their disappointing performance thus far,” she said.
The charges against Mashabane stemmed from complaints by local and South African staff at the embassy in Jakarta.
He was found guilty in 2001 on 21 workplace charges, and a panel recommended he be fired.
The complaints included stroking the buttocks of an employee, molesting a staff member in a lift and making suggestive motions with his tongue to an embassy employee.
He appealed the judgement and was allowed to continue in his post pending the outcome.
In June 2003 another charge was laid against him by a South African staffer, and he was again found guilty.
The findings were reversed in April this year by Dlamini-Zuma, acting as the appeal authority. She has since suggested that Mashabane was being dragged through the mud for exposing motor vehicle fraud at the embassy. – Sapa