Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training Mduduzi Manana embodies #menaretrash.

(He has ANC Women’s League president and awful human Bathabile Dlamini on his side, but that’s a story for another day.)

Last week shocking footage emerged of Manana assaulting a woman at the Cubana in Cedar Square in Fourways, Jozi, and if you somehow missed that then do pop in HERE.

Since then the ANC have closed rank around Manana, trumpeting women’s rights whilst working feverishly behind the scenes to let a man with an alleged history of assault and abuse wriggle off the hook.

Manana has admitted to the slapping incident, and appeared in court last Thursday. He was granted R5 000 bail and faces two counts of assault, with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

And yes, he still has his job. Of course.

Speak to former employees in the deputy minister’s office, and they will tell you that he is “the boss from hell”.

Times LIVE with a long and lengthy look at his violent past:

One former secretary told the Sunday Times that her boss showed his nasty side from day one, in 2015. “The very first day one started, a form of abuse was displayed,” she said.

She said Manana would call her at 2am, swearing and threatening to fire her. When in a rage he would also throw his cellphone and diary at her. “He made me fly with my own money from Cape Town to Johannesburg and back to fetch a mobile printer.”

What the actual f*ck is going on here? Hang on, it gets worse:

Once, as punishment for a botched booking, he left the secretary to sit outside Manana’s flat in winter in Cape Town from midnight to 2am.

She claimed employees were made to clean his home and entertain his friends when he hosted parties at the weekend.

The former secretary said he once made the entire team work right through the night until 6am just to prove who was in charge.

“There was no deadline,” she said.

He verbally abused his staff, calling them iinkunkuma azichole estratweni – rubbish he picked up from the street.

The secretary claimed when a colleague had a miscarriage Manana [above] said he would not sympathise with her as she was “not loyal”.

“The man did not respect anyone as a human being. He took us as things that were there to do what he wanted. He does not follow any policies and runs the office as if it’s a farm.”

Somehow this guy has managed to not only hang onto a job, but climb the political ladder. Can you imagine what goes on and is swept under the rug?

Another former employee had similar stories to tell, saying he repeatedly threatened to fire her and and was fond of sending derogatory SMSs to staff.

Bodyguards who have worked with him in the past say he has fired more than five of his security detail in the past year, “and partied until the early hours of the morning, compromising their ability to function”.

His former head of office, Wonga Tabata, also lodged complaints against him as far back as 2012:

[Tabata’s] complaint centres on a phone call on the evening of July 16, a month after Manana had been appointed, in which Manana bizarrely accused his then head of office of “being part of a political grouping that did not want him to succeed as deputy minister”.

More embarrassment followed the next day when, in front of his staff and with his protectors in the next room, Manana launched into a screaming tirade, repeating accusations of “dirty political games” against Tabata and threatening to have him investigated by then state security minister Siyabonga Cwele.

Tabata, at the time a chief director on secondment to Manana’s office, described the attacks as “humiliating” and a “violation [of his] human dignity”. After the second encounter the 55-year-old requested the secondment be terminated.

I see nasty political stories all day, but there’s something about this guy and his crimes that are rotten to the core.

You want to know why #menaretrash won’t go away? Because men watched on whilst Mduduzi Manana abused his power and did nothing. These folks talk a good game in public but behind closed doors, like so many men in this country, they are complicit in the abuse.

[source:timeslive]