Dr Zakeera Docrat giving evidence at the Judicial Conduct Tribunal. Image: Office of the Chief Justice

In a historic first, a forensic linguistics expert was called as a witness to testify in a case of sexual harassment, and asked to interpret the meaning of emojis used in text exchanges between the two parties.

Dr Zakeera Docrat, a post-doctoral research fellow (under the auspices of the UWC Chair in Forensic Linguistics and Multilingualism) in forensic linguistics at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), described her testimony before the Judicial Conduct Tribunal earlier this week as “exhausting”.

Dr Docrat was called to give expert insight and interpretation into the sexually-charged use of emojis by suspended Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge and High Court secretary Andiswa Mengo.

Spending more than five hours testifying before the Judicial Conduct Tribunal, Docrat said she had been researching the use of emojis, in the South African context, since 2018.

“In 2024, the first article on emojis, the interpretation of emojis, was published by myself and co-authored with a colleague, Professor Russel Kaschula,” said Dr Docrat.

She said emojis, particularly, deal with non-verbal communication, and this could be split into two categories: either visual cues or paraverbal cues. In the instance of emojis, Docrat said this deals with visual cues. Paraverbal cues deal with speech, tone, and accent.

“The emojis have to be interpreted within a specific context. As a forensic and legal linguist, the first thing we would look at is to ensure that we’ve got a significant dataset, and by dataset I mean the number of text messages or the number of documents …if I were to be provided with only five text messages, there is no possible way in which I can interpret the emojis and establish the context, and understanding what was the conversation between the sender and the recipient, and the intention of the sender,” said Dr Docrat in her testimony.

Asked by the tribunal’s evidence leader Advocate Salomé Scheepers about the functions of emojis, Dr Docrat responded that often they were used as substitutes for words, for instance the ♥ for “love”, the second function was reinforcement in which written text was reinforced with an emoji which correlated with what was being said. The third one she said was contradiction when using a an emoji which did not correlate with what was being said in a written text, and finally “complementation” when emojis were used to an additional sentiment to a text, “it might not correlate with what you said, but it adds an additional sentiment,” said Dr Docrat.

GroundUp News reported that Dr Docrat explained that in reviewing the extensive WhatsApp correspondence between the two, some of which Judge Mbenenge had admitted to deleting, she observed a recurring trend in which the exchanges between the two initially maintained a tone that was respectful, professional, and courteous.

“That’s how most of the days started, and then it slowly degenerated where emojis were used to convey sexual acts, or sexual emojis were used.” 

When questioned about the peeled banana emoji that Mbenenge had sent to Mengo, she responded: “A banana is a fruit. That is the standard use for it. But in this context, and the fact that he previously asked for a BJ, oral sex, it depicts a circumcised penis.”

It is further claimed that Mbenenge included eggplant and peach emojis in a message he later deleted, though Mengo had already saved it. Dr Docrat reiterated that while the eggplant and peach are ordinarily a vegetable and a fruit respectively, “but in this context they were used to reflect a desire for intimacy”. The eggplant represented a penis, and the peach a vagina.

She noted this interpretation was evident because “they were not drawing up a shopping list”.