Axed deputy president Jacob Zuma goes on trial in the Johannesburg High Court on Monday for allegedly raping a family friend.
Zuma (63), who has not yet pleaded to the charge, is out on R20 000 bail. He is accused of raping a 31-year-old HIV-positive woman who is a well-known Aids activist.
Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe will preside over the trial. The announcement was placed on a court notice board on which the names of judges presiding over trials are posted. The board is updated every Friday.
On Thursday, reporters were told that Johannesburg High Court Deputy Judge President Phineas Mojapelo may preside over the trial.
Zuma’s attorney, Mike Hulley, said that by 5.30pm on Friday, Zuma’s legal team had not been officially informed that Ngoepe would be the judge.
”We have been told by the media.”
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi refused to comment on the matter.
”Who the judge is, is not an NPA matter. We refuse to confirm or deny who the judge is.”
The court will hear that on November 2 last year the woman visited Zuma at his Forest Town home in Johannesburg at his invitation.
During the course of the evening, he invited her to stay over for the night and showed her where she could sleep. Later that evening, the woman went to bed.
According to the indictment, Zuma entered the woman’s room while she was sleeping and offered her a massage. She declined the massage, he removed the duvet covering her and allegedly raped her.
Zuma has denied guilt. After his first court appearance in December, he issued a statement reading: ”I am innocent of these charges.”
Zuma’s supporters and women’s rights activists will hold protests outside the court.
The road outside the court will be closed, as pickets have been organised by People opposing Women Abuse and the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust.
”We call for this picket mainly to raise our opposition and rejection of the manner in which comrade Jacob Zuma has been treated by some within some organs of state and institutions of democracy,” the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust said on Wednesday.
The Gauteng spokesperson for the trust, Kaizer Mohau, told reporters about 5 000 people are expected to attend the picket outside the Johannesburg High Court.
Members of the city’s metro police and the South African Police Service will be deployed to maintain tight security.
Asked how Zuma was, Silas Zuma, a relative of the former deputy president, said earlier this week: ”He has always been positive right through, actually to the surprise of the family.”
He said the family also wants Zuma’s supporters to participate in Monday’s picket, as they believe he is guilty of neither the rape nor the corruption charges he is facing. ”As a family we don’t believe, because we take his word. He has told us he is not guilty … and we believe that.” — Sapa