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As South Africans wait for Western Cape ANC leader Marius Fransman to explain himself – following a charge of sexual harassment laid against him by his 20-year-old assistant – we can rule out the following: it is not possible for a subordinate to consent to sex with her boss, nor is it possible that she can seduce him without his culpability.
Ordinarily, these are issues that should be dealt with by the ANC Women’s League, but being legendary fence-sitters these days, they are too tongue-tied. On the odd occasion when they do express an opinion, they behave like flibbertigibbets on a moral slippery slope.
But I do not fault them. The entrenched patriarchy, misogyny and downright bigotry of some in the ANC overwhelms them.
This is a problem of a man’s making. It partly needs a man to rectify it. So here I am. I volunteer.
I must state from the outset that I have no gripe with Fransman. He is simply a useful conduit who happens to have grasped at the final straw.
Here’s my back story: In 2006, I was elected secretary of the SA Students’ Congress (Sasco), a student chapter of the ANC, in the Western Cape. Back then, #FeesMustFall movements were not a novelty for lower middle class families as they are today. Born with a teensy bit of silver in my feeding spoon, I had little reason to join these troublemakers. Some say, inconsiderately, it was class suicide.
So many things that happened in the students’ congress were new to me. I had to recount my blessings when my chairperson told me he had to work as a petrol attendant to supplement his education. On a daily basis during the course of my work, I would come face to face with grinding poverty in its various permutations.
For the young female students who were members of the organisation, poverty had particular significance. Their membership was exemplified by what Friedrich Engels, in The Origin of the Family, refers to as the overriding and “secondary economic considerations which exert so powerful an influence on the choice of a [sexual] partner”.
I am told that today this is referred to by comrades and racists alike as “pantypreneurship”. Back then, we used terms such as nyawing (eating), social programmes or congress packages.
Despite being from the oppressed classes, the menfolk – favoured and elected to powerful student representative councils (SRCs) – used their positions to get laid.
University SRCs are powerful structures that come with all the trappings of public office. Not only does council membership give you access to the levers of political power, but you also get to sit on boards that appoint senior executives and allocate tenders, financial aid, residences and fee waivers. Membership also comes with a stipend, a car, free tuition and an entertainment budget.
After being elected, I experienced what can only be described as a baptism of sorts harking back to the Robert Herrick poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time. Imagine my shock when, on a campus visit, I was presented with a bottle of Johnnie “Motsamai” Blue Label and a woman to “take care of me”. I am talking here about a living human being.
And so one gets subsumed into the culture. I realised that when other leaders paid our province a visit, it was considered discourteous not to arrange a social programme.
This was justified on the basis that “young people had to be young in all aspects of life”.
Shortly thereafter, I caught wind of allegations that an SRC president had assaulted his girlfriend, herself a member of the organisation. We suspended him immediately and asked the university to investigate.
They seemed reluctant. Nothing came of it. I only fully understood this on witnessing a vice-chancellor write out a cheque from her personal account when we were in need of funds. It seemed a regular occurrence. I was the only one in that meeting who appeared nonplussed.
After my term ended, a comrade confided in me that she had been sexually assaulted by a student leader – alcohol was involved.
Although the organisation would have been willing to deal with the matter, the victim was unsure and unwilling to take the issue further. I supported her through HIV and pregnancy tests, and ensured she received counselling.
Such issues overwhelmed me. I had not signed up for them. It was horrendous and I felt helpless.
Today, with the wisdom of hindsight, I realise there can be no such thing as sexual consent between unequal parties. There is also a huge chasm between lawful and moral consent.
Morality requires an appreciation that women are, by mere accident of nature, stillborn into a gender construct that permanently subjugates them to the whims of men.
Spurred by socioeconomic demands and the need to survive, women are at the demented service of men – almost always forced into sexual relations they would not ordinarily desire.
Until we reorder these social relations in a way that prevents power, income and class from having an overriding influence over a woman’s choice of partner, it is inappropriate to have sexual relations in the workplace.
Sexual relations should be based on mutual affection and consent. As Engels puts it: “Since sex love is by its very nature exclusive – although this exclusiveness is fully realised today only in the woman – then marriage based on sex love is by its very nature monogamy.” (By the way, this applies to African polygamous marriages as well.)
If you are a married politician and your 20-year-old assistant does the full monty in the office, you must know one thing: “niks-mapha-no-taste”.
Do not do like Oscar Pistorius and fire four shots through the door. See the door as a chastity belt and run. Should you fail to make your escape, you will be found guilty of “sexual harassment by dolus eventualis”.
As a seasoned politician, you ought to have foreseen that unless you had fallen hopelessly in love with your assistant and pledged to marry her, it is par for the course that sex is driven by illicit motive on either side.
If you proceeded in spite of this, you would have reconciled yourself to the obvious dangers. Therefore, if you stack the hay, you must roll in it.
Jesting aside, the fact is, sex at work carries an enormous cost to public services. As economist Joseph Stiglitz warns us, misaligned private uses of public resources can induce government officials to take actions that are not, in any sense, in the public interest.
Accordingly, managers incur wasteful expenditure when they travel unnecessarily with “concubines”. They cannot call out poor performance; people are not hired on merit; the list goes on...
As much as we believe Fransman is innocent until proven guilty, whatever explanation he will give, consent is not one of the options available to him.
Hoveka read ethical philosophy at the University of Cape Town and is contracted as a speechwriting specialist in the Office of the Deputy President
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