An African National Congress (ANC) court docked six months pay from two men who had sex with Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser — not because the court found she had been raped, but because she was a child.
The Johannesburg High Court heard on Thursday that one of the men still denies he had sex with her when she was a teenager and felt that he had been dealt ”rough justice”.
These details emerged from a draft of an autobiography that the defence handed in as evidence, to the shock of the woman, at the start of the trial.
The woman insists that they had sex with her without her consent, but the court heard that the ANC court, conducted in exile, said that she had agreed to sex.
Both men were members of the exile community at the time and were in their twenties and thirties.
One of the men, who had been living in her parent’s house, said her mother had ”given her to him”, by allowing her to walk around the house improperly dressed.
The woman also said that the man’s girlfriend had beaten her and that he had not intervened. At one stage he stood at the door and said ”that’s enough”.
The woman, who alleges Zuma raped her on November 2 last year, said her mother was devastated to hear that the man [living in her house] had had sex with her and would never have allowed it.
”I very clearly remember my mother saying he has no right to do it and that even if I was a prostitute he would not have the right.”
When 16 pages of the autobiography were produced on Thursday,
the court fell silent, with only the turning of pages in reporter’s notebooks audible.
The few people present for the in camera hearing leaned forward to catch every word. – Sapa