Zuma trial: 'Ma, I was raped'

“Ma, I was raped,” is how Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser first broke the news of the alleged attack, the Johannesburg High Court heard on Tuesday.

Unisa accountancy lecturer Nosipho “Pinkie” Mgudlwa said she had SMS’d the alleged victim about borrowing an Indian outfit.

The woman, who had lived with Mgudlwa in August and September last year, phoned her back on her office landline at around 11.45am on November 3.

“As I was speaking to her I noticed she was not her happy self. I asked her whether she was alright, to which she responded by saying ‘yes Ma’,” Mgudlwa continued.

She asked her again what was the matter.

“After I was saying to her that she was not all right, she subsequently told me: ‘Ma I was raped’”.

Before she said that, the woman had been crying, said Mgudlwa.

There was no re-examination, her testimony was over in a few minutes, and the court adjourned briefly to call the next witness.

The doctor who examined Zuma’s accuser took the stand on Monday to describe his examination of the woman.

He corroborated her testimony last week that she was examined at 8pm on November 3—the day after the alleged rape.

She had appeared calm, had bathed, washed and douched and changed her clothes.

Last week, the woman said she had only showered. It was conceded that this information on the regulatory J88 form may have been incorrectly ticked.

The doctor described in intimate detail the physical attributes and the state of her vagina. He noticed that she had a posterior fourchette tear. The fourchette is a thin fold of skin at the base of the vulva.

This could be from either not having intercourse for a long time, a lack of preparation, or from an instrument or a fingernail. It could also have been caused from force or from passion.

He put samples taken from her into a box provided for such examinations and sent the samples for analysis.

Earlier, trauma expert Merle Friedman was asked why she did not apply any of the known tests available to determine whether a person was lying.

She said that none of these tests applied to the South African norms and it would have been irresponsible to do so. - Sapa