Publication: Mail and Guardian Issued: Date: 2006-03-17 Reporter: Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya

Bad Week at JZ's New Office

 

Publication 

Mail and Guardian
Date

2006-03-17

Reporter

 Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya

Web Link

www.mg.co.za

 

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An artist expresses his support for Jacob Zuma outside the Johannesburg court. (Photograph: Nadine Hutton)

Jacob Zuma has learnt that, as in politics, a week can be a very long time when in the dock charged with rape.

By the end of last week, Zuma’s defence team was so pleased with themselves that they were contemplating asking the judge to throw the matter out because the state had not built a strong enough case to cause their client to take the witness stand.

By Thursday, the pendulum had swung. The state announced that it would use the adjournment until next Thursday to decide whether it would call any of the witnesses on its list who had not yet testified. The effect of prosecutor Charin de Beer’s announcement was that the state had effectively presented its case -- and might close it when the trial resumes next week. The other implication was that the long-anticipated evidence by Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils might not be led.

Inside court, it was a week that Zuma and his supporters would have been happy to end a day early, after the state and the defence had agreed to do so.

Last week, Zuma’s lawyers believed they had reasonably succeeded in creating a picture suggesting that the woman accusing the African National Congress deputy president had a history of making unsubstantiated rape allegations.

They had created an impression that she was a mentally unstable: her mother testified that the complainant was still seeing a psychologist. She had also been treated at a mental institution in Zambia as a result of suffering hallucinations and nightmares caused by having being raped as a five-year-old and by her father’s death.

But after two weeks of the trial, the central issue -- whether the woman with a sexual past, either as a victim or as an alleged false witness, had been raped -- had not been convincingly disproved.

It was a week in which the state’s trump card so far, psychologist Merle Friedman, testified that the complainant had displayed normal symptoms of a trauma victim when she “froze” instead of fighting off Zuma’s alleged unwanted sexual advances.

Judge Willem van der Merwe also heard that Zuma had not mentioned having consensual sex with the complainant when giving the police a statement denying the rape.

In his plea explanation, Zuma said the two had agreed to have sex.

This week the state flirted with information without giving away the purport of the evidence led. One witness, virology professor Desmond Martin, on Thursday told the court about the chances of acquiring the HI virus if a man had unprotected and unlubricated sex with a carrier of the virus.

Another witness told the court about the number of calls and text messages exchanged by Zuma and the complainant, her mother, KwaZulu-Natal health minister Zweli Mkhize and other people associated with the complainant from the time of the alleged rape.

The state did not elaborate on what was to be inferred from this evidence. Yusuf Dockrat, an attorney who had told the court that he had been paid by Mkhize to provide legal assistance to the complainant, this week told the court that the complainant was adamant in her resolve to press ahead with the charges.

The complainant had already told the court that Mkhize had attempted to facilitate monetary compensation to get the woman to drop the charges.

On Thursday, Zuma’s counsel, Kemp J Kemp, was reduced to arguing with the investigating officer, Peter Linda, about who had come out first -- Zuma or his attorney Michael Hulley -- when the police visited the former deputy president at his Nkandla homestead.

According to Kemp, an earlier witness, the head of detectives in Gauteng, commissioner Norman Taioe, had a different version of who had come out of the house.

Kemp also engaged in lengthy ping-pong with Linda over the reason for the visit to Nkandla. Linda said it was part of a normal crime investigation to visit the suspect, but Kemp was dissatisfied with the answer. The two finally agreed that Linda and Taioe had arrived in the KwaZulu-Natal hinterland to “interview” Zuma.

Kemp wanted to know whether on the follow-up visit, this time at Zuma’s Johannesburg home, they were seated or standing when Taioe asked to see the room where the alleged rape took place.

If the state does call it a day on Thursday, it will be up to Zuma himself, from the dock, to ensure that he ends next week better than he did this one.

With acknowledgement to Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya and the Mail & Gaurdian.