South Africa's ex-deputy tells of consensual sex in rape trial
South Africa's ex-deputy president Jacob Zuma took the stand at his rape trial and testified how he had unsafe and consensual sex with an HIV-positive woman.
Once the frontrunner to succeed President Thabo Mbeki, Zuma told the Johannesburg high court how he had sex with the 31-year-old woman, an old family friend, at his Johannesburg home five months ago after she asked him for a massage.
"She complained of her body being tired and she asked me to massage her," said Zuma, taking the stand for the first time in the trial that could end his political career.
Speaking in his native Zulu language, Zuma recounted how he gave her a full body massage and removed the cloth that she was wearing.
"She did not have any objection," he said.
"I touched her and she also responded, my Lord. Then I got up and took off my pyjamas. When I got back under the duvet she covered me with her arms and her leg. I then kissed her."
Zuma's defence lawyer Kemp J Kemp asked him why he did not used a condom during sex.
"I asked her: 'Do you have a condom?' She did not have it. I said: 'me, I don't have a condom'," said Zuma.
"I hesitated a bit... (but) she said: 'You cannot just leave a woman if she is already in that position'," he told the court.
"I said to myself as we grew up in the Zulu culture, you don't just leave a woman in that situation because if you do, she may even have you arrested and say you are a rapist."
Zuma told the court that he was not HIV-positive and did not put her at risk of re-infection.
He said she had spent the night at his house because she was upset about a sick family member. Zuma said she went to sleep but asked him to wake her when he finished work in his study because she wanted to discuss something with him.
"I said to her 'I have finished working but it looks like you are fast asleep. Do you think we can continue talking?' She said 'Oh yes'."
"I then said to her 'You follow me' and I asked her to go to my bedroom," said Zuma.
He said he was devastated when he later learned that she had laid a rape charge against him, and sent her aunts to talk to her. They suggested that he marry her.
"(They said) it looks like there is a love relationship here, they asked... would it not be better for lobola negotiations to be instituted," Zuma said, referring to the African custom of payment to the father of the bride.
"The lobola issue was discussed at length and they asked me if I would do it. I said to them, if that's her wish. I have no problem with starting negotiations if she was happy with that."
The court also heard about his role in the struggle against apartheid and his relationship with the alleged victim's father, who was also a veteran of the African National Congress (ANC).
Lawyers representing Zuma failed last week to win an early dismissal of the case, with Judge Willem van der Merwe dismissing arguments that the evidence furnished by the state was not solid.
The defense has attacked the credibility of the alleged victim, who took the stand about four weeks ago to testify that she was paralyzed with fear when Zuma entered the guest bedroom where she was sleeping and raped her.
The judge also questioned the defense's arguments that the rape charge was part of a plot to end Zuma's political career.
The ruling ANC split into pro-Mbeki and pro-Zuma factions after the president fired Zuma in a major corruption scandal last June.
Zuma, who will go on trial on two graft charges in a separate case in July, has said that the corruption case is part of a political conspiracy to prevent him from succeeding Mbeki when he steps down in 2009.
AFP
