Is Katlego Maboe not served a grave injustice in this ongoing saga?

By: Clyde Ramalaine

A few weeks ago, TV personality Katlego Maboe in a video clip shot in his house by his former girlfriend Monique Muller with whom he shares a child went viral. Katlego is a well-known multi-skilled for some a local celebrity in his own right for this reason lost not just his girlfriend but also his lucrative contract with one of South Africa’s leading short-term insurance companies. OUTsurance a big player in the Insurance industry announced parting ways with arguably its number one brand ambassador. It appears OUTsurance decided he was not anymore good for their brand. We have all at least seen the adverts where the words ‘chencha-dai-deng’ have been made famous.

Beyond his confession and admission, he is punished in the denial of his rights as engineered by his former paramour and aided by a OUTsurance and castigated by social media actors who to varying degrees are no better than Katlego for their own infidelities known or not.

Fast forward to this week Katlego is no more a brand ambassador with OUTsurance primarily because of this video. In such a video, Katlego is forced to confess his infidelities with the tangible threat of him not seeing his child again used as a means to an end. From the video, Katlego confesses to having shared a bed with a married colleague from OUTsurance.  It does not take rocket sciences to know that the married woman Nikita Murray is also in trouble. However, Murray and her husband released a statement challenging the claims that Monique Muller leveled and confirming that they have worked through their challenges. Maboe is now wholly removed from the OUTsurance ‘chencha-dai-deng’ adverts and we now see a watered-down version of adverts he gave meaning and a unique identity.

Well, what is really at play here? Is the treatment that Katlego receives justified as him deserving what comes to him in even scales? It appears Katlego is accused of moral failure no dissimilar to corruption. Exactly what is Katlego’s sin? While he is made the fun of all – his rights appear compromised if not trampled on because in South Africa when you stand accused of anything your rights are immediately forfeited. South Africans do not ask what is at play. In this mix-masala of morality, ethics, infidelity,  gender-based-violence claims the constitution in a democracy is ignored.

At an emotional level most would say yes, he deserved to be outed, he deserved to be humiliated, he deserved to be economically disenfranchised by losing income and opportunity to earn in spaces where his skills and not his flaws lead.  Yet we live in more than an emotional world, where the law stands dispassionate to emotions and must prove sacrosanct.

Mulling over the Katlego saga I thought, how is it possible that the age-old subject of infidelity in 2020 could come back to bite an unmarried person who may or may not have sworn allegiance to any faith-tradition that dictates a single woman or man in the union? Why are Katlego’s constitutional rights not respected in a country and society that prognosticates constitutional democracy measurable in a celebrated bill of rights?

Let us, therefore, attempt unpacking what is at play to make the case of Katlego being served a toxic combination of gross injustice.

In the first instance, Katlego is recorded in the privacy of his house confronted by a hostile partner whose anger is tangible by the intonation and choices of expletives.

Katlego is under duress to confess while threatened. The confession has as background the threat of him losing access to his son. So, his partner [Monique] while rightfully angry for being betrayed chooses to revenge by cornering him, recording him and threatening him. Right here her emotional choices extend beyond mere disgust at betrayal which affords her agency and options how to respond to such betrayal.  Monique had every right to be angry. She had every right to demand he accounts for the fact that they shared a relationship even a house in shared living space. Yet her rights are not existing in a vacuum but must be considered in tandem with the rights of the one she accuses and threatens. Equally so her right to be angry, though justified,  for this betrayal cannot naturally translate to her threat of denying him his access to their child.

Katlego does not stand accused of any child molestation but infidelity in a relationship between two adults in an imperfect world where they both mirror those imperfections. Him being a father, and a good father at that is mutually exclusive to this act of betrayal of his girlfriend. The two simply cannot be considered as related or forced into a convenience of choice. She was wrong to threaten him in attempt of using the child as a tool to inflict pain on him.

Secondly, her rightful anger cannot and should not translate to her claiming an inalienable right to record him because that by itself is another infringement on his privacy, particularly since this takes place in his dwelling. The law dictates one  forewarns those  you intend recording that you are about to record him / her thus affording them the right to be a part of it or not. His choices to cheat on her does not lead to a natural forfeiting of his right to know and have a say when he is recorded.

Thirdly, we also not sure what Monique as Katlego’s partner may have had as a possible weapon in her other hand while he is reduced to this forced confession. If it can be established that Katlego’s life was in danger since we not sure if she had a weapon of threat with her while recording him this may assume a whole different case. Hopefully, the courts will ventilate this and aid us in clarity on the conditions of this recording.

The issue of intent on the part of Monique is unquestionable. With intent, one means she had her confrontation planned and was going to execute It meticulously so. Here was not an abrupt reaction to disconcerting unpleasant news. She knew a confession in absence of a video recording would have no meaning or traction for the intentions and audiences she had in mind.

She knew him appearing vulnerable and dishevelled would render her victorious in revenge, she reasoned she needed to plan with aim of  inflicting maximum pain and damage. Her choices to actualise her agency in predetermining to corner him into a recording speaks to the fact that his actions which details a betrayal did not automatically rob her from her agency.  Meaning she could have opted to pack her bags and walk out, she could have left him, she was not cornered to do what she did in a singularity of option. I guess I am saying she had options to live out her agency.

On this score it appears Maboe’s rights as a father,  a constitutionally enshrined privacy,  a reputation, and an economic livelihood are all sacrificed at the altar of Monique’s  anger better understood in the axiomatic expression of ‘’a woman’s scorn’’ as her entitled right in the superlative to ignore and inflict maximum damage.

On another score is this not a classic case of gender-based-violence in which in this instance the female is the perpetrator and the male a victim? My prism of the social constructionism known as Gender-Based-Violence-concerns a  much wider arc than what often is assumed in the narrowness of physical violence. In this sense, we must aspire to free gender-based-violence from the misconceptions of convenient kaftans limited to a male perpetrator on a female victim. While this in many instances is the case in South Africa and for which we must never attempt any excuse, we cannot deny that the neutrality of gender as the definitive description of the type of violence accommodates any human being which includes males as victims. Gender-Based-Violence includes emotional abuse, it includes verbal abuse and all others forms abuse which violates the victims rights to dignity and respect as a common humanity in constitutional democracy would dictate.

Our usage of gender as our premise to typify a specific violence must compel us to appreciate the neutrality of that gender assertion. It is also important to know that gender here is not an automatic synonym for being woman but identifies the reality of humans defined in social settings of gender descriptions of male and female even in our society an increasing form of definition beyond the traditional male and female context.

We also learned that though with less intensity and perhaps not registering any true traction an accusation of gender-based violence  levelled at Katlego. This here appears to be an add-on and is not the primary accusation levelled. There is little doubt that the primary issue was betrayal [his cheating on her] and not the issue of gender-based violence. While the unfolding case may or may not ventilate
in substantial essence a history of gender-based violence, we dare not automatically assume the accusation is authentic and necessarily central. The precarious nature of these types of relationships when they go pear – shaped evidence in this that it becomes an automatic means to have someone eternally painted as bad. Unfortunately, the burden to prove such an accusation is on the part of the victim, while it does not automatically exonerate the perpetrator it also cannot automatically confirm guilt.

Moving on from the infringed and compromised rights of Maboe as served by his live-in-partner, Monique Muller we see an employer OUTsurance wholly distancing itself from Katlego and ending its contract with him as their primary brand ambassador. Not having had sight of what is the contract that Maboe and OUTsurance signed, I can only make assumptions. One, therefore,  assumes that nowhere in any contract the contractor would dictate the private life choices albeit in sanctity or infidelity as a precondition for termination. Meaning I would struggle to appreciate how OUTsurance would prescribe to a married or single employee that in the event of any of them having romantic relations beyond a current existing relationship it would automatically translate to a breach in the contractual obligations. The fundamental question for OUTsurance’s actions then must be ventilated or proven in having suffered or perceived to have suffered reputational damage through the infidelities of Katlego and Mrs Nikita Murray both employees to varying degrees.  Summarily delinking Katlego as brand ambassador for OUTsurance must constitute grounds for a claim of injustice, since the burden to claim reputational damage as advanced warrants being proven first by the one that ended the contract.

Beyond our collective even hypocritical condemnation measurable in rightful emotional outbursts against the cheating partner, separate to us poking fun at him, we dare not be part of actions that compromise his or anyone else’s constitutional rights. Regardless to the pain of that betrayal we must prove cognisant not to condone the actions of Monique in her expressions of exerting her rightful agency. We equally so cannot endorse the ambivalence of an OUTsurance, who is yet to prove the reputational damage it suffered as a result of the infidelity choices of its employees.
Upon us is the burden to ask what informs our morality in the judgment of Katlego, what constitutes the crime he committed and does he forfeit because of this his constitutional rights? We warrant attempting consistency and must consciously resist the temptation of a chameleon morality as to what we make stand and what we let slide in the case of Kalego and Monique. On another scale what informs this sporadic morality and is it a given if so why and for who. It is my conviction that Katlego owed Monique Muller whom he shared relations with an explanation for his acts of betrayal, however that does not remove his agency in claiming his constitutional rights.