Singer and former ANC MP Jennifer Ferguson said SA Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan’s “legally mouthed” response to her rape case, which is being investigated by the police, undermined the gravity of situation.
She said Jordaan’s response through his lawyers gave a foretaste of the “all too typical character defamation” tactic adopted by some lawyers in a morally questionable defence of their client’s misconduct.
Earlier this week, Jordaan’s lawyer, Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi, said: “Ms Ferguson’s allegations are absolutely unfounded and untrue, and that her true motives are deeply suspect.”
Approached for comment, Ferguson charged that Jordaan had not once, in his personal capacity, found the courage to come forward and take responsibility for his side of the story.
“As a survivor of rape I have consistently, personally, and often painfully, taken responsibility for my truth. I have, as in the case of most survivors, taken the full brunt of scrutiny and questioning of motive, as is typical in a patriarchal society.
“This process is escalated and intensified once one musters the courage to lay a charge.
“He has chosen instead to hide behind a wall of highly paid lawyers whose only motives are providing lucrative protection of his interests. In this, the worst will resort to all kinds of typical tactics of character defamation and even ‘slut-shaming’,” said Ferguson.
She said that was the familiar and precarious terrain all survivors of rape had to enter once they made a public disclosure of rape.
“They are rendered even more vulnerable once they enter the financially and emotionally draining fields of legal scrutiny.
“I have taken the decision to lay a charge after numerous months of extensive and exhausting consultation with not only legal experts but non-governmental organisations working in the fields of especially gender-based violence. I have also spent many hours listening to the stories of other survivors of rape.”
Ferguson said sexual misconduct was rife in all aspects of society, often emanating from men in top leadership positions, seeping downwards to the most shocking forms of domestic abuse and violence.
“Some of us, one could call it paths of destiny, are called forth, sometimes through tragic circumstance or acts of conscience, to take up this fight. The struggle is always at great personal cost.
“This is what I am doing despite the distress and demand it is laying on myself and those closest to me.
“In this I am comforted knowing I am but part of a long and extraordinary tradition of the many women activists who have risen and are rising to challenge injustice in all its forms, especially patriarchal,” she said. Mohlala-Mulaudzi did not respond to Ferguson’s statement yesterday.