Legal Affairs Correspondent

Jacob Zuma’s defence team started picking holes in his accuser’s testimony in the Johannesburg High Court yesterday, in an attempt to cast doubt on the truth of her statement to police last year about her alleged rape.

In a case where there are no eyewitnesses and it boils down to the word of one person against the other, any inconsistencies can weaken a case.

Judge Willem van der Merwe earlier granted Zuma’s defence team leave to cross-examine the complainant about her sexual history and to lead evidence about it.

The former deputy president is accused of raping the 31-year-old family friend at his Johannesburg home on November 2 last year.

Zuma has pleaded not guilty and said he had had consensual sex with her.

Zuma’s counsel, Kemp Kemp, asked during a second day of hearings from which the public was excluded, why the complainant had left out details in her statement to the police of what she did after the alleged rape and before she woke up the next day.

“After the alleged rape, you said you went to sleep. This is not true,” Kemp said, adding that she had made some calls and sent text messages to relatives.

“In those SMSs, you did not say anything about rape. Why did you not mention the calls you made in your statement?” Kemp asked.

The complainant replied that it was an omission on her part because it was the first time she had made a statement to police.

The woman also disclosed during her cross-examination that she had been raped before.

Kemp questioned the long gaps between meetings between herself and Zuma after her return from exile in 1990, saying it was inconceivable that she could have been out of touch for eight years with a person she regarded as a father figure.

In her testimony on Monday, the complainant said she had not spoken to Zuma between 1990 — when she came back to SA from Swaziland — and 1998.

Kemp said the complainant had told Zuma in 2001, two years after she was diagnosed, that she had contracted HIV.

She had spoken to him only on a few occasions.

With acknowledgement to Ernest Mabuza and Business Day.