Former deputy president Jacob Zuma began his testimony at the Johannesburg High Court on Monday by recalling how he came to be involved in the struggle against apartheid.
Zuma coughed nervously to clear his throat and held two fingers in the air as he was sworn in.
Choosing to testify in isiZulu he nodded as his lawyer Kemp J Kemp, told him to listen carefully to the whole question put to him before answering.
Before the start of the trial he and his lawyers had been seen in consultation in one of the public booths outside Court 4E.
Kemp began by asking him to state his name, his age and his date of birth.
Judge Willem van der Merwe broke the tension of his long-awaited testimony by joking that Zuma would probably spend his 64th birthday –April 12 — in court.
Wearing a dark suit and a wine-coloured tie he addressed Van der Merwe in the Zulu honorific ”Nkosi Yenkantolo [Your Worship]” as he told of how he joined the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) in 1958.
He was first an ordinary branch member and a member of the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
During 1960 the ANC and other organisations were banned and he became a member of the ANC underground.
In 1962, shortly after UmKhonto WeSizwe (MK) was established, he became a member of the military wing of the party and in 1963 he was arrested for his political activities.
After being detained for 90 days in Pretoria, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to 10 years on Robben Island.
He said he knew the complainant’s father from his ANC activities. They had met in 1958 in the ANCYL and had worked together for the organisation. It was only at a later meeting at the Durban train station when he realised that the father too was in the MK underground.
The complainant’s father served a 90-day detention with him and they were tried together and her father was also sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island.
After they were released from prison they again tried to revive the movement and Zuma encouraged his friend to participate in the activities of the struggle.
Kemp asked Zuma to clarify whether Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils was also on Robben Island, as said by the complainant’s mother during her testimony.
Zuma said that her mother was mistaken as Kasrils was not one of the people arrested in 1963.
The public in the fuller than usual court listened intently and one of the investigating officers on the case, Peter Linda, took notes of Zuma’s testimony.
Zuma is accused of raping the 31-year-old HIV positive family friend at his home in Johannesburg on November 2 last year.
He is expected to testify that they had consensual sex. – Sapa