The woman at the centre of the Jacob Zuma rape trial has told the Johannesburg High Court about her ordeal.
The complainant in the state vs Zuma said she was already asleep when the former deputy president entered her room. It is against the law to name a rape victim, unless she gives consent. He offered to tuck her in and massage her.
She said to him: ”I’m already asleep, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Zuma replied that he could massage her while she was sleeping. She again said she was sleeping.
Zuma then removed the blanket she was sleeping under.
”I was lying on my side. He started to massage my shoulders. He then held me on my shoulders and turned me around facing upwards. I then felt his knees on both sides of my legs.
He once again started massaging her shoulders, ”and I said ‘no”’.
”After I said this, he didn’t stop massaging me. At that point I opened my eyes and saw that he was naked.”
The bedroom light was on.
”I immediately closed my eyes again and turned my head the other way.”
Asked by prosecutor Charin de Beer what she was thinking at the time, the complainant responded: ”I thought ‘Oh, no! It can’t be, he is on top of me, he is naked, I’m in his house.’ I was just confused. I actually thought it can’t be happening. At that point I faced reality. He was just about to rape me.”
The complainant said Zuma then opened her kanga [a wrap], and pushed her legs apart with one knee.
He then used both his hands to hold her hands down.
”Then he took his one hand and put it on my vagina and just opened my vagina with his hand. His legs were between my legs and then he penetrated me with his penis. He had both his hands on my hands.”
The complainant said Zuma started ”pushing and thrusting”.
Zuma then said to her: ”I told you I’d take care of you.”
”He said ‘sweetheart’. He then said ‘You are a real girl”’.
At some point Zuma ”pecked” her on the lips and cheek.
”He started thrusting harder and harder and asked if he should ejaculate inside of me. He pushed and thrusted harder and when he was done, he got up and left.”
The complainant said at first she lay on the bed, and did nothing. Eventually she gathered her strength, found her kanga and drew it over her.
”I then took my hand and put it on top of my vagina and that is when I felt his semen and that he had ejaculated.”
She said Zuma had not used a condom.
Earlier, Zuma (63) had pleaded not guilty to raping her at his Johannesburg home on November 2 last year.
The small number of supporters and reporters allowed to attend the in camera hearing watched her closely as she was led into the court by a policeman.
With her head shaved, the 31-year-old wore a blue Kangol jacket and khaki trousers and sat with her hands on her lap in the witness box.
Presiding Judge Willem van der Merwe gently asked her to speak louder so that he and the entire court could hear ”every word”.
De Beer asked her if she saw the man who had raped her was in court.
She replied: ”Yes, I do.”
De Beer said: ”Who is he?”
”He is Jacob Zuma,” she replied.
Responding to questions from de Beer, the complainant said she had known Zuma since she was five.
”I remember him as one of the very friendly uncles who always used to play around with us and talk to us,” she said of her childhood memories when her family was in exile in Swaziland.
Zuma and her father were very close friends and had known each other since they were about 20.
They were together as youth in the African National Congress, were in exile together and served time as political prisoners on Robben Island.
When her father died in 1985, she was devastated and tried to retain her ties with the family.
”One of them was umalume [uncle] Zuma.
”I found that I liked being around him,” she said, recalling how he used to tell them stories about their youth and about her father.
She returned to South Africa in December 1990 and remained in touch with Zuma.
She explained that she was a wellness co-ordinator and Aids activist and focused on issues of health, HIV and sexuality.
She told the court that she first learnt that she was HIV-positive in 1999 and had told Zuma about this at the time as she thought it was something he should know.
On hearing the news, Zuma said she was very brave to be living with HIV.
”I told him because I thought that as a father, it was an important part of my life that he should know about.”
She said over the next few years Zuma had said he would help her find a job and offered to support her with her studies.
She wanted to study homeopathic medicine and successfully applied for a training course in Australia. Zuma however was not keen for her to go there because she would be too far away and would have no support.
Zuma encouraged her to apply for a course in the United Kingdom and said he would phone around to help with funding.
At the end of July 2005, she was accepted for the UK course but by the September cut-off date she had not paid for it yet. She kept been visiting Zuma, whom she repeatedly called umalume.
In August, she went to visit him and he asked her if she had a boyfriend. She joked that all the good ones were taken and said: ”No, umalume, you are not getting lobola anytime soon”.
She said this because he would have been at the forefront of any lobola negotiations for her.
When she heard that he was no longer deputy president, she sent him a message of support, saying that she loved him and her and the other children who had been in exile with him, invited him to lunch.
Later in September, she discovered that her CD4 count (an indication of the stage of HIV) had fallen drastically.
She told Zuma at that stage that she was missing her mother and he arranged for and air ticket to go and see her.
The trial continues. – Sapa