Former deputy president Jacob Zuma does not think he placed his rape accuser at risk of HIV/Aids or any other sexually transmitted disease by not using a condom, the Johannesburg High Court heard on Monday.
Zuma is accused of raping a family friend at his Johannesburg home in November last year, and he spent the morning explaining that the two had sex after he massaged her.
They discussed the use of a condom but neither had one, and they went ahead anyway.
To questioning from his advocate Kemp J Kemp, Zuma said that after being appointed deputy president of the country, he was made chairperson of the Aids Council.
He was expected to have a better knowledge of the disease and the council took measures to inform the public of precautionary measures, ”particularly because there were debates about this issue”.
Zuma said ”even government itself, ministers and deputy ministers, we were all expected to teach this gospel”.
Kemp asked if he knew the risks associated with a man having sex with an HIV-positive woman.
He said in his lay understanding that one could not just contract the virus from having sex with a woman.
”I had knowledge that as a layperson chances were very slim you could get the disease … just because you had intercourse with a woman you’d be infected.”
Kemp then asked if he knew the risk was different for a woman having sex with an HIV-positive man, to which he said he did.
Without directly asking Zuma his own HIV status, Kemp asked if he thought the woman was at any risk having sex with him.
”No, she was not at risk.”
The court has heard testimony from a virologist on the way the risk of contracting HIV/Aids increases, with the levels of the virus in the body and whether there are any tears in the genitals of either the man or the woman.
Earlier, Zuma described to the court in detail on Monday how he had sex with the woman who has accused him of rape.
He went to her bedroom on the night of November 2 last year after finishing work, because she wanted to tell him something, Zuma testified.
Zuma told her to come and speak to him in his bedroom, which she did a short while later. She sat on his bed as there were no chairs in his room.
While talking to him, she complained she was getting cold and asked if she could get under the duvet.
”I said yes, she can, no problem,” Zuma told the court. As she was wearing only a kanga (wrap) when she entered his room, he thought she would not object if he changed into his pyjamas, which he did.
When the woman complained her body was sore and asked for a massage, Zuma fetched baby oil from his bathroom. On his return, she was lying on her stomach, the court heard. He started massaging her shoulders, but most of her back was covered by the kanga. She loosened it, ”so I could massage with ease”.
”I removed the kanga towards her rear and noticed she didn’t have panties on.”
When she asked him to massage her legs, he lifted the edge of the kanga towards her buttocks.
”I noticed she didn’t have any difficulty with me rubbing her up to her private parts.”
She then asked him to massage the front of her body. While doing so ”I thought to myself, maybe she would like me to rub her whole body”, Zuma said.
He removed the kanga completely and started rubbing her legs. When he had finished, the woman thanked him. Zuma took the baby oil back to the bathroom and washed his hands. When he returned to the room, the woman was under the duvet.
He climbed into the bed and saw the woman had not put on her kanga.
She put her arm over him. He touched her and she responded. He got out of the bed, took off his pyjamas and then climbed back in. She put an arm and a leg over him.
”I touched her and kissed her. When I touched her private parts, she was ready.”
He asked if she had a condom. She said ”No”. He told her he did not have one either.
When he hesitated, she said he could not ”leave a woman in that situation”.
”And I said to myself, I know as we grew up in the Zulu culture you don’t leave a woman in that situation because if you do then she will even have you arrested and say that you are a rapist.”
The woman opened her thighs wide, they kissed each other and then started having intercourse.
When he told her she was ”a real woman”, she laughed. Asked how she felt during intercourse, she replied ”fine, very fine”.
He also asked her if he could ejaculate inside her. She did not respond, just smiled.
Zuma did ejaculate inside her and once they were finished, he went to his bathroom and had a shower. He returned to the bedroom to find the woman gone.
She was in the guest room. ”I asked her, ‘How was it?’ She said: ‘No fine.”’
She told him she had taxi fare, but intended finding her way to Jan Smuts Avenue where she would get transport.
They kissed each other and bade each other goodbye. Zuma told the court his accuser was an assertive woman. If she did not like something, she would say it.
He did not know about the fainting fits in which she would lose consciousness, he responded to a question from Kemp.
Asked if he knew whether she could put up a strong physical resistance, Zuma replied: ”If she did not want it, she would easily push me away. I know her. She is not weak.”
The trial continues. – Sapa