People should spare a thought for Jacob Zuma’s alleged victim, President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday night in his first public comment on the rape charge against his former deputy.
There had been a formal African National Congress decision to support Zuma when he was charged with corruption earlier this year, he said in a live interview on Metro FM’s Given Mkhari show.
”But I must also say with regard to the case now, this latest one, where the deputy president was charged today, obviously the movement also would want to say it also supports the person, the woman who laid the charges and complained,” he said.
”We need to also express support for the alleged victim of this rape in the same way as we are saying we support the deputy president.”
Though Mbeki relieved Zuma of his position as deputy president of the country several months ago, Zuma is still deputy president of the ANC.
Mbeki said he felt ”somewhat of a burden” over what had happened to Zuma — who was formally charged with rape earlier on Tuesday, and also faces corruption charges — in the sense of the sadness and grief it caused.
”I think that it’s been a heavy year from that point of view, but of course I think we need to sustain the position that we’ve taken that we must respect the principle that everybody’s innocent till proven guilty. It’s indeed important to stick to this principle and not do anything that’s in contradiction to that.”
Asked whether the ANC and its alliance partners had handled the Zuma issue in the best possible way over the past few months, he said that regardless of the outcome of the court case, ”all of us” carried a sense of hurt.
”And so many people, members of the organisation will act in a manner that is driven by that legitimate and very understandable sense of hurt.
”We’ve never had an issue of this kind in the entire history, 93 years, of the ANC. We’ve never had any instance of this kind. And I think that we need to be understanding about the way that people have acted,” he said.
”I think it’s necessary to understand that when all of us as members of the ANC, members who’ve worked with the deputy president for many years, who’ve been led by him under very difficult circumstances some of us, for instance in the years of struggle against apartheid, that when these things happen to him, people want to express a view, a feeling of support and so on.
”And I think we need to appreciate that. It may be expressed in ways that one person or another may not approve of, but I think we need to understand the context.”
Asked about suggestions that he had been ”too silent” on Zuma, he said what was happening were matters that related to the courts.
”My view has been that as part of the process of respecting the independence of the judiciary, on these issues about the rule of law, I think there’s a particular obligation, particularly on the president of the republic, not to say or do anything which might communicate a message of disrespect for these legal, constitutional processes.”
Some people might very well have wanted him to speak, he said.
”But I really do think that we needed to create maximum space for judicial legal process to go ahead without any feeling or suggestion that there was any intervention by the executive which would seek to influence those decisions and processes in one way or the other.”
He also said he still believed that his decision to relieve Zuma from the deputy presidency of the country was correct, and would do exactly the same if faced with the choice now. – Sapa