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BusaBuntu describes in this open letter how she met with Khalo Matabane and how he exhibited sexual predatory behaviour towards her.
Distant until you are at the centre: A tale of my meetings with a sexual predator
I graduated from Afda [film school] in 2006 and was fortunate enough, the following year, to work on a low budget television show where I learnt about producing, writing for game show formats and pretty much the type of media knowledge I still believe safe and playful work environments can create. This letter is not about that. This letter is about how I quickly got thrust into the normalised bullying culture in our media industry and spent time with a sexual predator with a smile.
Sadly we all know that the sexual predator is not an individual exclusively found in the media industry, the crisis in masculinity we have been enduring for years now, is so normalised it can be sniffed out of every corner of our work spaces, homes, streets and churches. I’d like to also clarify that I have been bullied by females in the industry too and fully recognise that bullies can be found in both gender identities. My lived experience has been one of only suffering from male sexual predators and so these words are from my perspective and may be a window into your similar perspective regardless of background.
I first met Khalo Matabane in the film industry’s social mill; it clearly was not a memorable encounter, as I still can’t remember the exact location and event. There I am, an eager young woman looking for mentors who seem to understand the media culture better than I do. Better. That was the word that set me up as a vulnerable, big-eyed artist so eager to work and learn. The worst part was because I was in my early 20s I managed to tangle that idea of betterness to more than my skills, in my head it somehow applied to my identity too, like most overachievers. And this was Khalo’s in, he invited me to have a simple lunch with him at the Mugg & Bean in Killarney Mall the following week and I accepted. As I type this I chuckle teary-eyed at my laptop thinking of the other stories I read this morning that detailed the same behaviour. The same location. The same dialogue. The same body language. The same sexual predator.
I think Khalo enjoyed having conversations about African literature, European cinema and film festivals with me. I was certain that he enjoyed my physical appearance, especially my breasts, because he would always aggressively tell me. I’d like to at this point give my general understanding of flirting; to me flirting has to be a mutual experience, a very clear ball game where good banter and strong physical queues are given by both people e.g. locking of eyes, shared laughter, warm embraces and a kinetic energy that echoes your shared chemistry. I was never attracted to Khalo and I don’t say this to say he is not attractive to someone else, I just didn’t find him attractive because his nervous nature, bullying dialogue and predatorial behaviours had my Spidey-senses up from our first encounter but he was well-read, interested in the same type of film culture and shared a passion for [film maker Quentin] Tarantino that allowed for good debate. In our good debates I never gave any indication that he was ever gonna get it so there was never a reason for him to think that we were in any way flirting, especially since this was set up as a professional encounter.
To read Khalo’s quoted statements in defence of his behaviour in the City Press article really worries me because it shows how dire his perception of his own behaviour is. I’m sure there has also been some legal advising going on there.
READ: Khalo Matabane: Women speak out
At all the three meetings we had at Killarney Mall he would always casually say lewd and sexually offensive comments like, ‘I once f***ed a woman in Berlin for six hours. They just love my African c***’ to elicit some sort of a reaction from me. I think he may have been trying to gauge how far he could push until he got what he wanted. Like a hyena, teasing its prey and enjoying the slow kill. Based on his responses to the other four women’s allegations these are the type of comments he declares to be ‘flirtatious’ or a ‘pain in the butt’. For someone who had to hear them and experience them first hand I’d like to let you know, sir, that these comments were not flirtatious nor were they a pain in the butt and it’s definitely not something a powerful film director should be saying in a meeting with a potential female apprentice. Your words are harmful, offensive and more than a pain in the butt, they are a pain in society.
Bullies don’t seek out strong-willed people, they prey on the weak, and they seek out someone who validates their desperate need to be seen. And so, by jokingly laughing off some of the horrible things he would say about women, Khalo managed to make me feel safe enough, a luxury perhaps given to me by the location, the daytime meeting and the fact that I was working in television. I shudder knowing that two of the other reported alleged rape victims did not have these options and are going to have to deal with doubt before they find justice.
Khalo would also use the clear shock I exhibited as a reason to touch me. After each lewd or crass comment he made he would lay his hand on my shoulder, knee or arm and rub me for what always felt too long. The shoulder and knee rub happened on our second encounter and I’ll never forget how he chewed on a piece of medium rare steak as I just sat there confused, a little afraid and just still believing that this was normal. That this was how things were and so I would have to just suck it up until I get my big break. So, still in this state of vulnerable naivety, I agreed to see him again because he promised to talk to me about being an assistant director and maybe even a writer on one of his big, big, big projects. Never any named projects, just emphasis on how big they were.
When I got back home that evening my first instinct was to wash my body. I felt dirty. I felt weird man, I couldn’t put language to it and that’s pretty darn weird for me. I turned the shower on and I just sobbed because I felt responsible for putting myself in this position. I had chosen to go to these meetings and I let him pay for my meals, I let this happen to me. My head was reeling, was getting work always going to be this violent? Did I have to be treated like less than a human to make an income? Why was it seemingly okay for men and women in power to treat us like this?
I grew up in a feminist Zulu household and my brother, sister and I have never tolerated prejudicial behaviour amongst ourselves and so the same can be said of how we carry ourselves in public. We are our mother’s children and so even though I had had that much-needed moment of release in the shower, my TAKE-NO-SHIT and TREAT OTHER PEOPLE AS YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE TREATED principles taught to me by my mother kicked in.
I knew that what I had experienced was not okay, I felt it in my gut but I couldn’t put words to it because when I thought about the other times I’d felt this way it always went back to a flashback of a man touching me inappropriately, rocking me near his crotch on his leg for far too long or just whistling some aggressive comment as I walked across a street. Goodness this is dark, but sharing it gives me the power to ensure that my 13-year-old niece and future babies don’t grow up thinking that this normalised ‘rape culture’ is okay and so type on I shall.
The final meeting was a bit of a happy ending; well I see it that way.
I am fortunate enough to be able to live at home with my family when the freelance work isn’t flowing, which is the norm for most freelancers and entrepreneurs, and so not worrying about rent and having people to care for me gives me a confidence and a safety net if I don’t get work for a couple of months. Also, I work with the Film and Publication Board of South Africa and so I have a greater understanding of how regulation gives young people and the vulnerable in public a platform to speak out or just question whether or not their feelings of discomfort are warranted. They usually always are.
Young people entering the work space from lower-income homes and far more financially demanding backgrounds often have fewer options and so make for easier targets because they are more vulnerable. If this is you, I hope this letter gives you some courage to know that some of us really just want to work with you for your skill, your positive energy and your desire to create art. We may not be the loudest or the ones with the biggest budget but we have created work environments that seek to nurture your artistic and at best your personal growth.
Khalo and I met at the Mugg & Bean one last time; clearly Jozi didn’t have enough cafés in the early 2000s. At this point I had made up my mind not to allow this sexual predator the joy of having any power over me, I wasn’t going to validate his desperation for control and exploitation of power or, simply put, I was going to take-no-shit. I certainly wasn’t going to give him a chance to speak to me in a harmful manner again. Easier said than done, but by golly I was going to try.
I was rather cold in my demeanour and gave fewer provocative answers to his swooping generalisations about female artists and art in general, he noticed. I asked him if he had a chance to look at the concept document I had given him last time we’d seen one another and obviously he hadn’t but my audacious questioning of such a busy and powerful man annoyed him. I didn’t order food even though he had and this annoyed him too because it made it clear that I wasn’t interested in making this a long engagement.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he cracked his third, fifth or seventh joke to no laughter. I’m not sure on the number of the joke as I’d lost interest at this point.
He turned to me after swigging on some water and asked me directly if I wanted to have sex with him or not, as if he’d been campaigning all along and was really tired now and deserved sex for all the energy spent. I didn’t reply, I looked at him and considered how I was going to handle the situation. He got more frustrated, thrust his cutlery on his plate, leaned in my direction and aggressively said, ‘How do you want to take it baby?’
I burst into laughter and just kept laughing for a little bit. I laughed the pain away.
He awkwardly laughed too and it seemed as though our joint laughter helped to release the clear tension in the room. I laughed from nervousness and shock because, my good people, I was shooketh. I mean I was just a growing human trying to navigate my emotional quotient in a rather socially violent moment. Dining with sexual predators is no joke. After I managed to pull myself together I said, ‘Thank you, Khalo, but I am not interested in that. I actually have to excuse myself now.’ I stood up to his rather shocked face and politely said farewell. I remember my lip trembling and my eyes watering but I didn’t cry. I didn’t give him my power, that’s for me to keep thank you very much.
I carry no ill will for Khalo Matabane and other men and boys who’ve sexually harassed me, because I choose forgiveness in most instances of violence. I’ve worked on myself to get to that point and I keep working on myself because the tests of my patience are ongoing. I do it because it gives me the peace these predators lack, it allows for me to retain my power. This was such a seminal moment in my self-empowerment that it took seeing the City Press article on my social media platform to truly understand what the lesson was in this painful experience.
I see now that I subconsciously used this experience with Khalo and some other bullies in the industry to better understand how we as young people and women are violated and continuously exploited in our workspaces. Because of this pain I am hugely passionate about creating safe and playful spaces in my work environments.
Most importantly, what I learnt from this pain is that if I carried the anger and shame I had to endure from these experiences with me it would be me choosing to carry the pain and darkness of a sexual predator or bully on my shoulders.
I pity him and men like him actually because there is no room for sexual predators in the Africa we are building, especially the Africa I’m committed to building. There is no room for supremacist agendas in our communities and men like Khalo Matabane, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Kevin Spacey will spend hours with spin doctors trying to twist these stories to suit their agenda and not really spend time trying to heal and understand how to stop causing harm, or more importantly understanding the root cause of the pain that led them to being so harmful in the first place.
Lastly, the reason I wrote this letter is because I know there are some young people, especially young girls, who come into our industry with the hope of becoming famous while some just want to support their families. Both visions are valid and both deserve respect and care. This letter is for you girls, this letter is for the little girl I was when I was sexually harassed and nobody gave me a perspective that validated my confused emotions of shame and guilt and reassured me that this was not my fault nor was it a norm we should continue to propagate. These types of scenarios are sadly still commonplace and the worst thing to do is think that it’s somehow your fault that you weren’t being treated like a human while trying to make ends meet. The workspace is about our skills and our ability to use them in contributing to our communities.
I wrote thisletter so you know it’s okay to cry about what has happened to you or what may still happen to you because it hurts and it can often hurt for a long, long time. I wrote this letter so that maybe by the time my children are in their 30s they don’t have to write this letter to their kids. I wrote this letter to heal and I hope it brings some healing to anyone who needs it. I wrote this letter for you.
#MeToo
#YourBody #YourChoice #TakeNoShit
#TreatOtherPeopleAsYouWouldLikeToBeTreated #KindnessIsPower #LoveIsPower #ForgivenessIsPower
Amandla.
BusaBuntu
May 14, 2018
Jozi, Mzansi, Earth, Milky Way
