Gauteng department of education was correct to fire sex pest principal, says labour regulator

A dismissed Houghton primary school principal has failed in his efforts to get his job back after the Education Labour Relations Council found that the Gauteng education department was correct to declare him a sex pest. 

Shadrack Ndou, former principal of Asteri Primary School, was dismissed in April this year for repeatedly sexually harassing a colleague. He challenged the action, claiming it was a case of unfair dismissal. 

The ELRC heard that a female teacher had worked at Asteri Primary since January 2013. At that time, she said, Ndou was the principal and was someone she viewed as a father figure. 

However, Ndou started pursuing her. He sent her numerous romantic messages on WhatsApp, telling her he was attracted to her. She rejected his advances and told him she wanted him only to provide workplace leadership. 

The number used to send the messages to the teacher was found to have belonged to Ndou.

The ELRC was told that Ndou would regularly call her to his office to discuss work-related matters. However, when he returned to work after being placed on precautionary suspension, he stopped calling on her. 

During their one-on-one meetings in his office, Ndou would express romantic relationship interests in her. Several colleagues and the school’s administrative staff confirmed that he would regularly call the teacher to his office and that he would often ask her to make photocopies for him, which she did out of respect for his authority even though, as a teacher, this was not her job. 

However, when he returned from precautionary transfer, Ndou stopped declaring interest in the teacher and started treating her badly. He accused her of stealing school equipment and had her arrested by the police.  

The teacher said when she was new at the school Ndou would sometimes lend her money, which she would repay. She said this was only in the early stages of her employment at the school and was something she regarded as an act of care. She said she had attended Ndou’s father’s funeral, which she felt was an act of humanity despite their differences.

However, in 2022 after attending sexual harassment training at the school she decided to apply for a transfer. This prompted Ndou to tell her there were rumours they were in a relationship, so they may as well start dating. 

Social worker Belinda Fisher testified that she met the teacher in July 2023 and later conducted a home visit to debrief her as she was experiencing extreme stress. 

Fisher said she referred her for counselling as she was traumatised, fearful and had been booked off sick due to the sexual harassment she was experiencing at school. She was suffering from severe anxiety. 

Another teacher told the ELRC that Ndou had started hugging her inappropriately. He would rub his genitals against her and “make filthy sounds”. This would happen in his office during school hours, and it made her uncomfortable. 

She said she felt that the complaints she and another teacher had laid against Ndou with the Gauteng education department were not being taken seriously enough and they escalated the matter by taking it to SABC investigative TV show Cutting Edge to have the plight of young female teachers highlighted.

The department stepped in after details of the case started circulating on social media. However, a disciplinary hearing was held and Ndou was found not guilty. This prompted the second complaint to report the sexual harassment to the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), the police, the Gauteng education department and the South African Council of Education (Sace). 

Sace heard the matter, found Ndou guilty and placed him on precautionary transfer. But when he returned to school he started bullying the second complaint , harassing her and shouting at her in front of learners. 

The harassment and bullying led to her suffering depression.

Granted, the victims of this disgusting, predatory conduct should have reported the incidents on time, to ensure corrective actions, but their fears, correctly or incorrectly were also fuelled by the failure of Gauteng Education to address these complaints promptly. 

—  Ntjatja Aphane, ELRC panellist

A third compliant, a grade R teacher who started working at Asteri Primary in 2017, told the ELRC that Ndou would regularly ask her out on dates. She refused, telling him she had a boyfriend and was not interested in going out with him. 

She described an incident in which Ndou asked her to help him carry a printer to his office where he proceeded to pin her against a cupboard and grope her. She was terrified and trembling and he told her not to be scared. She managed to push him away and run out of the office, slamming the door behind her. 

She said the harassment happened over a long period and she had been frightened to report it. Only after sexual harassment training was presented to staff at the school did she understand that she had a case, and how and where she could report the matter. 

She told the ELRC that the harassment had affected her so badly that she had been diagnosed with depression, admitted to a psychiatric hospital for 20 days and was booked off work for three months. 

Another grade R teacher said she had worked closely with the third complainant. She had witnessed the incident in which Ndou had coerced her into helping him carry a printer to his office. She said she had waited for her to come out of the office and had noticed that she appeared breathless and extremely upset. 

She told her what had happened and when she asked her why she hadn’t screamed, she said she had simply frozen. It was late in the day and all the teachers had gone home. 

Buyisile Mabuya, a director of transformation at the Gauteng education department, said she had been asked to carry out sexual harassment in the workplace training at Asteri Primary School because several sexual harassment allegations had been made against the school’s principal. 

She testified that immediately after the training, three young women came to her with sexual harassment complaints against Ndou. 

She took complaints from the three complainants and these were forwarded to the labour relations unit for further investigation and the case was facilitated by the sexual harassment adviser of the district. 

Ndou was found not found guilty of harassing the second complainant, while the complaint by the first complainant was lost and Ndou was then charged again. This led to Ndou being transferred to another school from September 2022 until August 2023.  

Labour relations officer Resoketswe Mbele said she had presided over Ndou’s last disciplinary and there were no procedural irregularities. Ndou’s rights were clearly explained to him and the correct process checklist was complied with. 

At the hearing Ndou was charged with repeatedly sexually harassing the first and third complainants.  

When called to testify, Ndou said all the incident reports were “spurious fabrications” because the women couldn’t give the exact date and time of the alleged offences. He complained that he had been labelled a sex pest principal in the Sunday Times and that his accuser had appeared on Cutting Edge in September 2022. 

He accused the women of having a vendetta against him. He denied ever sending the first complainant WhatsApp messages, claiming the phone from which they were sent was not his. He said the criminal charges he laid against her for stealing school property were not harassment. 

He claimed that the incidents could not have happened because they were alleged to have occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic when there were mask and social distancing protocols in place. 

ELRC panellist Ntjatja Aphane found the evidence of the complainants to have been clear, credible and consistent and all the witnesses corroborated each other. 

“Granted, the victims of this disgusting, predatory conduct should have reported the incidents on time, to ensure corrective actions, but their fears, correctly or incorrectly were also fuelled by the failure of Gauteng Education to address these complaints promptly,” Aphane said. 

“Losing educator statements, and failing to follow up with the educators, until the victims resorted to social media and print media, through a Sunday newspaper and Cutting Edge, is not condoned and constitutes a serious dereliction of duty.” 

Aphane found that Ndou’s version and his witness testimony were “riddled with inconsistencies, deception, highly impractical and improbable”. 

Ndou’s dismissal was found to have been procedurally fair and the Gauteng education department could not be faulted for terminating his employment. It was noted that Ndou showed no remorse.