Jacob Zuma was told by a lawyer not to say in a statement to police he had sex with the woman who accuses him of rape, the Johannesburg High Court heard on Monday.
He testified that his lawyer Michael Hulley had told him instead to write in the statement ”after we shared each other’s company privately”.
Zuma gave the written statement to two police officers after they read him his rights at his Nkandla home in KwaZulu-Natal. In the statement, he denied raping the 31-year-old HIV-positive complainant.
Zuma denied pointing out the guest room as the alleged scene of the crime when police asked him to do so. ”That is not true,” he said.
Zuma also told the court that during a meeting with two women who the complainant referred to as aunts, they had asked him if he was willing to start lobola negotiations. He said they told him that it looked like a ”love relationship”.
They said, ”You’d better marry her”, and asked if it would not be better if lobola negotiations be initiated. ”The very lobola issue was discussed at length.”
They asked him what was on his mind. ”I said to them, ‘Well, if that is your wish, I have no problem with starting lobola negotiations.”’
Earlier on Monday, Zuma told the court he does not think he placed his rape accuser at risk of HIV/Aids or any other sexually transmitted disease by not using a condom.
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,” Zuma answered.
He will continue his testimony on Tuesday. — Sapa