Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser yesterday told the Johannesburg High Court that she was “pressured” to deny that the politician had raped her in the hours and days following her complaint to the police.

She was testifying in the former deputy president’s rape trial, which resumed yesterday.

She said she was later offered “compensation” by KwaZulu-Natal finance MEC Zweli Mkhize in exchange for dropping the charges.

The complainant’s testimony, which was heard in camera, suggests that senior police officials were at the centre of the confusion that followed revelations that Zuma was under investigation for rape late last year. The complainant told the court she was first instructed by a police official to tell the Sunday Times that “nothing like that had happened”, when that newspaper phoned to confirm that she had made a rape complaint. The police official later put her in contact with the rival Independent Newspapers, whose Sunday papers later printed her denial of the Sunday Times story, she said.

It is understood that the complainant was then in the care of the South African Police Service’s witness protection unit.

This would suggest the police were part of an elaborate attempt to cover up the rape investigation against Zuma, and even used the media to sow confusion and disinformation about the status of the investigation.

The complainant told the court that her police “minder”, identified as Superintendent Khan, gave her the number of prominent Independent Newspapers group journalist, Jeremy Gordin, whom he said police would use to print a rebuttal of the Sunday Times story.

“She said I must tell him that the Sunday Times were in the process of printing a story in the newspaper and I must say I am the person in the story and that I denied everything,” she said.

Gordin’s story detailing the complainant’s denials of the rape complaint later appeared in the Sunday Independent and Sunday Tribune on the same day the Sunday Times revealed that Zuma was under investigation for rape.

The complainant said Khan had advised her to give Gordin permission to name her in the story.

The complainant, who was speaking on the alleged rape for the first time since the story first became public, said she later came under pressure from relatives and family friends, who said that the rape allegations would “rip the African National Congress apart”.

“I felt very pressured,” she told the court.

The complainant also said she refused offers for a meeting with Zuma in Durban, in the days following her police complaint.

Mkhize has denied that he tried to broker a settlement between Zuma and his accuser. Mkhize’s name is on the state’s witness list. Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils will also be called to explain his relationship with the complainant and how he had advised her following her allegation.

Zuma entered a plea of not guilty yesterday.

In a statement read before Judge Willem van der Merwe, Zuma said sexual contact between him and the accuser was consensual and that she had a history of making similar accusations against other people.

With acknowledgement to the Business Day, Ernest Mabuza, Karima Brown and Vukani Mde.