After describing in detail her alleged rape by Jacob Zuma, the complainant told the Johannesburg High Court on Monday that she had been offered compensation if she dropped the charge.
She was also asked if she realised the effect the allegation would have on the African National Congress, and told to deny the charge to two newspaper reporters.
At the start of the trial on Monday, Zuma said he had consensual sex with the 31-year-old HIV-positive Aids activist at his Johannesburg home on November 2, 2005. He denied raping her and claimed the woman had made similar allegations against other men in the past.
She told the court Zuma had invited her to stay over at his house on November 2 after she received news that a relative had been bitten by a snake in Swaziland.
He told her to sleep in the guest bedroom and he told her several times that he would ”tuck her in” when he was finished with the day’s business.
At one stage he also told her to go up to his room so that he could tuck her in. She said she jokingly replied: ”What kind of tucking in is that needs me to come to your room,” and he laughed.
She went to bed with a book wearing a kanga (a wrap), and demonstrated in court how she tied it. She was naked underneath, saving her clean underwear for the next day.
She was already asleep when he entered her room and again offered to tuck her in and massage her.
She said to him: ”No umalume [uncle] I’m already asleep, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Zuma replied he could massage her while she was sleeping. She again said ”no umalume I’m already asleep”.
Zuma then removed the duvet 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 at the same time he was massaging me I said: ”eh eh [no] umalume”.
He continued massaging her and she opened her eyes and saw he was naked.
”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, 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.”
Zuma started ”pushing and thrusting”.
He said to her: ”I told you I’d take care of you … sweetheart. 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 thrust 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.
She sent an SMS to her sisters saying: ”I said I am very uncomfortable, umalume is starting to look at me sexually. There must be something in my drawers [underwear]. The mothers must not know”.
She continued: ”I couldn’t bring myself to actually say it, or to write in a message what had actually happened.”
She finally broke down to an aunt, saying that she had been raped. Over the following days she was examined by a doctor and laid a charge of rape.
Two female family friends visited her a few days later. The first woman said she was concerned about her safety and the second had asked: ”Did I realise what it was going to do to the ANC? That it was going to rip people apart.”
The woman, who may not be named, said that while in witness protection she was told by her minder, a Superintendent Khan, to tell the Sunday Times and the Sunday Tribune that ”nothing like that had happened”.
At one stage she said she had a telephone conversation with KwaZulu-Natal finance MEC Zweli Mkhize who said he had spoken to her mother about compensation if the charges were dropped.
She told Mkhize, who is a close family friend, she would continue with the route she had chosen. At one stage Zuma phoned her and said he was aware of the steps she had taken against him and wanted to talk to her about it.
She said she would prefer if he dealt with her mother and he agreed. He told her he wanted to talk to her mother about the two of them and possibly the rape charge.
She said that on November 15 a lawyer identifying himself as Yusuf met her and said he had been sent by Mkhize. The lawyer advised her to drop the charge.
She said she told him she would not drop the charge and he replied ”umalume will be surprised by this”.
She said the rape had emotionally devastated her and disrupted her life.
”At a time when I need my friends and family the most, I have had to go into witness protection and be separated from them.”
She told the court the last time she had had sex before Zuma, was in July 2004.
The woman said she had known Zuma since she was about five-years-old when her family was in exile, and that he and her father were close friends and both were political prisoners on Robben Island.
After her father died, she considered Zuma a father figure and they stayed in touch through visits and over the phone.
When she was diagnosed with HIV in April 1999, she told Zuma because ”as a father it was an important part of my life that he should know about”.
He offered to help her find work and help her finance her studies.
She will be cross-examined on Tuesday. – Sapa