Jacob Zuma’s lawyers spent much of Thursday trying to establish that Zuma’s accuser is a serial rape complainant who has levelled numerous groundless accusations against men in the past.
And after four days of testimony, his lawyers told the Mail & Guardian they might be able to apply for the dismissal of the rape charge against Zuma as soon as his accuser has finished giving evidence.
A lawyer associated with Zuma’s team said “it would not be a bad guess to say that we are very close to a Section 174 application”.
This would seek the dismissal of the charge on the basis that the state has not made a prima facie case requiring a defence.
The laywer cautioned, however, that what happened when the state re-examined the complainant would be the deciding factor.
Zuma has been accused of raping a 31-year-old family friend, who may not be named. He has denied the charges, saying the two agreed to have sex.
The intention of Zuma’s counsel, Kemp J Kemp, on Thursday was clearly to show that he is another victim of a woman with a history of making unsubstantiated rape allegations.
However, the woman remained adamant that the charges she has laid are true.
Earlier in the week, she told the court she had been raped before. Pressed for details by Zuma’s counsel on Thursday, she said she had been raped on three occasions while living in exile in Swaziland and once more after her return to South Africa in 1990.
She had first been raped as a five-year-old, and was again attacked by a man she named as Godfrey, with whom her family had shared a house in Swaziland.
She had also been sexually assaulted by someone called Charles and threatened with rape by another man called Mashaya, who had only spared her when he found that she was menstruating.
Kemp told the court that both Charles and Godfrey had been cleared of rape by an African National Congress tribunal, but convicted of having sex with a minor and given the minimum (unspecified) sentence. Charles still maintained that he had not had sexual relations with the woman.
However, the complainant stood her ground saying both men had had sex with her against her will.
“I remember Godfrey saying that I had it coming because my mother allowed me to go around the house naked or half-naked. I remember my mother saying that even if I were a prostitute it did not give Godfrey the right to rape me,” she told the court.
After returning to South Africa, she said she was nearly raped by a youth, whose name she did not know, while the two of them were preparing for a South African Council of Churches youth meeting.
The woman said she was again almost raped at another church night vigil. A youth came naked to the room where she was sleeping and attempted to remove the blanket she was sleeping under. A priest’s appearance had made him flee.
Clearly attempting to show that this was a case of consensual sex presented as rape, Kemp said the pastor in question had told Zuma’s lawyers that he had found the two youngsters in bed together, with the woman wearing a T-shirt and panties.
Again she stood by her version of events.
The woman later registered to study for the priesthood at a college in Vereeniging. Zuma’s lawyers put it to her that while studying there, she had accused a Namibian national of rape. She denied the claim, saying she believed that she had been raped because she found that she was five months’ pregnant without remembering having had sex with anyone. She thought that one of the men, possibly the boarding master in whose house she stayed, might have raped her after one of the many seizures she had suffered as a result of the trauma of previous sexual assaults. She had terminated the pregnancy.
The woman denied Kemp’s assertion that she had told church elders who came to establish why she had stopped coming to church that the pastor had raped her.
She told Judge Willem van der Merwe that she had stopped going to the priest’s house because he had suggested that they have an affair while his wife was at a teacher training college. The priest reproached himself for having made the suggestion but her discomfort had not abated.
The case has highlighted the bonds of comradeship formed in the ANC in exile. Apart from the woman’s relationship with Zuma, whom she calls malume (uncle), she has told the court that she sought the intervention of Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, while Zuma allegedly approached KwaZulu-Natal health minister Zweli Mkhize for help.
One judge has recused himself from the case because he is an uncle of the accused’s son while another decided not to hear the case because of his comradeship with Zuma while the ANC deputy president was an underground operative.