In an eight-page public statement, Sipho Pityana claims that Ramos, who succeeded Pityana as the chair of AngloGold Ashanti, has used her influence with the banking regulatory division of the Reserve Bank to prevent him from becoming Absa’s chair.
The person who Ramos allegedly influenced is head of banking regulation Kuben Naidoo, who according to Pityana has “long-standing professional, social and political relationships” with Ramos and her family. The Reserve Bank said last night it would challenge the allegations in court. Ramos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ramos did not personally respond last night, but the AngloGold’s board said in a statement it “emphatically rejects the allegations … which are baseless”. “The matter of Absa’s Chairmanship is one between Mr. Pityana and the Board of that company.”
The sequence of events is complicated and the circumstances of the alleged sexual harassment are in dispute. Pityana flatly denies any sexual harassment took place, and blames the allegation, at least partly, on a fractious boardroom battle that was taking place at the time at AngloGold Ashanti.
The identity of the complainant is not known, but the allegations made by the complainant have now been revealed, and whether, even on her version, they constitute sexual harassment is an open question. But a report compiled by an independent lawyer, Heidi Barns, found what happened did constitute sexual harassment and found Pityana at fault.
At the request of the Absa board, that finding has been challenged by another lawyer, Peter Harris, who found Barns’s finding “flawed”, although it did not make a determination on whether sexual harassment took place.
The allegation made by the complainant, a senior executive of AngloGold Ashanti, is that in February 2019, Pityana took her to a restaurant alone. After dinner, he gave her a lift back to her hotel, put his hand on top of hers and told her he loved her. At the hotel, he offered to escort her to her room but she objected and he left.
Pityana’s counter claim is that they were not alone in the restaurant; he was attended by his security detail as he was almost constantly, and did not give her a lift to her hotel or anywhere else. Harris found that Barns had not interviewed the security personnel who could have corroborated Pityana’s version, and that this constituted a “material flaw” in the finding. There were regular, recorded interactions between the security personnel and the […]
