Political Correspondent

THE media had “massacred” axed former South African deputy president Jacob Zuma and prejudged his guilt on the rape charges he is facing in the Johannesburg High Court, South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Blade Nzimande said yesterday.

Nzimande was addressing the media in Johannesburg following a meeting of the party’s central committee this weekend.

“The media has massacred comrade Jacob Zuma by trying him in public and finding him guilty before he even appeared in court,” he said.

Nzimande said the media’s bias against Zuma threatened the rule of law in SA as reporters ignored the principle that Zuma was presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Some newspapers had even broken the law in their reporting on Zuma’s rape trial, he said. Nzimande did not specify names, but the Sunday Independent and Beeld newspapers were both cited by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in a criminal complaint, following the two papers’ naming of Zuma’s accuser.

Zuma’s rape trial threatens to split the African National Congress-led tripartite alliance down the middle. The SACP and its labour ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have had to walk a tightrope over the Zuma rape trial.

Both organisations are staunch supporters of Zuma and have stood by the embattled politician after he was fired and later charged with two counts of corruption last year.

Both have characterised Zuma’s corruption trial as “political” and Cosatu’s central committee last year called for the corruption charges against him to be dropped. However the rape charges against Zuma have made him a political liability for his allies and support from Cosatu and the party has been muted.

Nzimande said the rape charges placed both Zuma and his accuser in an “extremely vulnerable position”.

“It is in the interests of both parties, and indeed of our liberation movement and our country, that a dignified process is allowed to proceed and that justice is done. We must not allow the reckless abuse of the rights of either comrade Zuma or the complainant.”

This followed media reports that sections of the crowd which gathered outside the court when Zuma appeared last week had hurled abuse at his accuser and pelted another woman, thought to be the accuser, with objects. But Nzimande said some of the “reckless rights abuse” came from “sections” of the media that had already pronounced Zuma guilty.

Zuma’s rape trial resumes on March 6.

With acknowledgement to  Vukani Mde and the Business Day.