Judge Willem van der Merwe will preside over former deputy president Jacob Zuma's rape trial on Monday.

This comes after Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe acceded to a request that he recuse himself at the start of the trial in February.

In explaining that he did not appoint himself, Ngoepe said that in matters of huge public interest the most senior judge is appointed, so he had to preside. Ngoepe's recusal was requested on the grounds that he had issued search warrants relating to Zuma's corruption trial scheduled to be heard in Durban later this year and that this might create the impression of bias.

Ngoepe said that Deputy Judge President Phineas Mojapelo was not available because of personal circumstances, later reported to be ties to Zuma through the liberation struggle. That left Deputy Judge President Jeremiah Shongwe, who heads the Pretoria High Court. According to a report in The Star newspaper, Zuma fathered a son with Shongwe's sister 29 years ago. Once Shongwe had recused himself for that reason, onlookers wondered who the judge would be.

Announcing that Van der Merwe would preside, Ngoepe said: "As I have already said, the next most senior judge will preside. That judge happens to be the Hon Mr Justice Van der Merwe; he will therefore hear the matter." Zuma is accused of raping a family friend at his home in Forest Town in Johannesburg last November. "There is an understandable huge interest in the matter.

I do hope, though, that we will, all of us, allow the trial to unfold in the most appropriate manner that it should; in particular, that the judging will be left to the judge," Ngoepe said. "He will, at the end of the trial, give his full reasons which will be made available to the public as usual."

A Pretoria High Court judge, Van der Merwe is the most senior after Ngoepe and his two deputies. Judge Ezra Goldstein is the most senior Johannesburg High Court judge. He was the judge who sentenced apartheid assassin Eugene De Kock -- known to his colleagues as "Prime Evil" -- to two life terms and 212 years in jail on 89 charges, ranging from murder and conspiracy to fraud, illegal arms possession and defeating the ends of justice.

Van der Merwe was one of the judges who dismissed a Democratic Party application in 1999 against the requirement of bar-coded identity documents to register to vote. He heard the case with Ngoepe and Judge Johan van der Westhuizen.

In another case, he found that South Africans were not mature or educated enough and did not have enough self-control to be issued with firearm licences. He was sentencing a man for shooting his police officer friend during an argument. Criticised for imposing the light sentence of eight years in prison, three of them suspended, Van der Merwe countered that the man had co-operated with the police and showed deep remorse.

He was also criticised for sentencing a man to 14 years in prison, in effect, for two murders, three attempted murders, malicious damage to property and theft, ordering that he consult a psychiatrist and psychologist while behind bars. It would have been better had Dewes served the 47 years imposed for the individual crimes, instead of the sentences running concurrently, said a relative of one of his victims.

Van der Merwe was the judge who sent four white dog unit policemen to jail for between four and five years each for setting the animals on three black Mozambican illegal immigrants in a training exercise described as cruel and sadistic. The policemen were shown in a videotape broadcast on television laughing as their victims pleaded for mercy. "The video shocked the world. I am not surprised. The video is shocking... The act was cruel and sadistic... It must have been terrifying," Van der Merwe found. "For years people have been tortured by police. The South African police neglected their duties by not letting these activities come to light," he continued. 

With acknowledgement to Sapa.