Big News today is that Liepollo Pheko has decided to lay a charge of intimidation against Andre Visagie.
Who they?
Well, they were some of the parties involved in the notorious “Touch me on my studio” incident back in April 2010. You can see the video here, but in case you had forgotten, Times Live has a handy reminder for you:
In April 2010 Liepollo Pheko and Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging secretary-general Andre Visagie were debating race relations in post-apartheid South Africa on the set of Africa 360.
When neither would let the other speak Visagie lost his temper, pulled off his microphone and started walking off the set. He turned back, walked towards her and said “… and you won’t dare, you won’t dare interrupting (sic) me…”.
Host Chris Maroleng intervened, during which he famously ordered Visagie not to “touch me on my studio”.
And then, as Pheko classlessly smirked, came Visagie’s pièce de résistance:
Visagie walked around the desk at which he and Pheko had been sitting, turned to face Pheko, and said: “I am not finished with you.”
Those words struck deep, it seems. So deep that only now, 1096 days on, Pheko has realised that she felt intimidated by Visagie.
Heaven only knows how she has carried on with her normal life, of being a policy analyst, social entrepreneur, senior executive, thought leader and social activist plus Managing Director and co-owner of management consultancy, Four Rivers Trading and Executive Director at NGO/think-tank, the Trade Collective, in the intervening period.
Quite what Mr Visagie had – or perhaps has – in mind for Ms Pheko is unclear. That’s probably why at each and every public event she has attended in the last 3 years, she must have been hugely concerned that the aging Mr Visagie would perhaps turn up and talk loudly at her in broken English some more.
In some ways, maybe she was almost desperate for it to happen, praying for that defining moment of release when Mr Visagie, having said his piece turned to her and added “Now I am finished with you”. But that moment has never come and it seems that the last three years have been nothing but a waiting game for Ms Pheko – and indeed for Mr Visagie, one would imagine.
And so, after somewhat belatedly realising that she was being intimidated back in 2010, Pheko is to finally lay a charge of intimidation against Visagie. These cases do tend to go on a bit, so one wonders exactly how long it will be before she is finished with Mr Visagie.
It should be noted that the timing of her decision has everything to do with the constant worry she has felt since Mr Visagie informed her of his lack of closure back in 2010 and nothing to do with her name being put forward as a possible presenter on Given Mkhari’s new Gauteng based radio station Power FM.
