Publication: Business Day Issued: Date: 2006-02-14 Reporter: Karima Brown Reporter: Vukani Mde

Trial Pits Diehards Against Feminists

 

Publication 

Business Day
Date 2006-02-14

Reporter

 Karima Brown
Vukani Mde

Web Link

www.businessday.co.za

 

Jacob Zuma’s appearance in court on a rape charge yesterday demonstrated a dictum of feminist theory and practice: the personal is political.

This was shown by the presence outside the Johannesburg High Court of two groups of demonstrators, both there to make opposing political points based on legitimate principles.

The larger, more militant crowd gathered to show support for their fallen hero. On the face of it, Zuma’s supporters defend the principle that he is innocent until proven guilty. But in reality their position has shifted to an assertion that Zuma cannot be guilty.

Zuma remains to them the victim of a political conspiracy to frustrate his presidential ambitions, and which now involves accusing him of abusing a close family friend in the worst possible way.

To the Zuma diehards, whose number outside the court grew as the day progressed, the gravity of the rape charge is argued away. The alleged violation is seen only through the prism of political conspiracy. Zuma’s enemies calculate his career will be finished by the rape trial whatever the outcome, they argue.

But this argument all but implicates Zuma’s alleged victim in the political machinations of his enemies. It means believing there was no rape and the complainant is party to a no-holds-barred power game, using the politics of rape in the arsenal against Zuma.

There have already been whispered questions about her “credibility”, based on her alleged connections to anti-Zuma factions in the African National Congress (ANC). Her sexual history has also been made an acceptable talking point in an effort to discredit her.

For the Zuma supporters, the context that frames the trial is political in the narrowest sense: Zuma is in court in Johannesburg because of a succession battle in the ANC ­ the same reason he will be in the dock in KwaZulu-Natal later in the year.

But there was another demonstration outside court yesterday whose presence was small yet poignant. Thirty gender and AIDS activists drove home the point that Zuma’s legal troubles can no longer be understood only in the context of ANC power politics. Zuma is a rape-accused. While his guilt is not established and the trial has yet to start, the existence of the accusation diminishes him politically and ethically.

This handful of activists say SA is morally bound to give succour to women who go public about abuse. Whatever the merits of the case, their political stance is that when a woman speaks out, she should be believed.

Their presence also forces sexual and other forms of gender violence into the public arena.

They challenge the silence from SA’s political establishment on rape and abuse ­ from the ruling party and its alliance to the ANC Women’s League ­ and the female politicians outside it.

With acknowledgements to Karima Brown, Vukani Mde and Business Day.