The Jacob Zuma trial, which has topped the national agenda since March 6, is set for its denouement. A lot is at stake: the next president, the battle against HIV and Aids, the role of women in society …
With not only matters of state but also of life and death at stake, it’s no wonder then that the former deputy president’s supporters have since the beginning of the trial sought the intercession of the ancestors and God to help their man.
For five weeks now, they have burned incense and carried posters of their hero on a cross outside the Johannesburg High Court.
Though Zuma threatened to sue the Sowetan for the headline, “I am like Christ”, being likened to the man whose main claim to fame was that he rose from the dead may prove to be a good omen.
In the week preceding Easter, Zuma’s followers got the first signs that somebody up there may have been listening to their prayers.
Three pastors — one a parish priest where Zuma’s accuser worshipped and two others who met her when she was a theology student — gave testimony that painted her as wont to falsely accuse acquaintances of rape.
Another spoke about a passionate relationship he had with her.
The testimony was aimed at undermining her credibility by suggesting the woman dubbed “Khwezi” by her supporters is a serial rape accuser.
The first days of the trial told a story of how Zuma had allegedly raped a 31-year-old family friend.
The state-led evidence had Zuma reeling as details of how he had allegedly forced himself on a hapless visitor to his home unfolded.
Then the state sought to provide a logical and scientific explanation for why she did not shout for help when she was being raped.
Zuma’s version is that the woman was a consensual participant.
He and the complainant differed in their evidence of where the alleged rape had taken place; in addition his first statement to the police did not even acknowledge that “consensual sex” had taken place.
The state’s case seemed unassailable enough to make Judge Willem van der Merwe reject the defence’s application to have the case thrown out without Zuma having to take the stand.
Zuma took the stand last week, and his views on the transmission and prevention of HIV and Aids as well as his cavalier approach to prevention (while not germane to a conviction) swung the pendulum of public opinion away from him.
In accordance with a clear strategy to discredit Khwezi, the three priests and two other church workers told the court about how she had made unsubstantiated rape charges against at least five men, four of them priests.
One of the alleged rapists was an effeminate church worker, Sandile Sithole, described by one of the witnesses as “a bit gayish”. The men who came to court, pastors April Mbambo, Sithembele Masoka, Oupa Letlabe and Modianyeo Modise, presented an image of Zuma being defended by men of moral rectitude.
Another witness, Duduzile Ngcobo, tried to dent the image of Zuma’s defence team as misogynist. Matronly and caring, she used her stint in the witness box to plead with the public “not to lose patience” with the complainant, whom she thought “needed help”.
She knew Zuma’s accuser from the time the two had worked together at the South African Council of Churches’ Interdenominational Youth Committee in Durban.
Ngcobo said she approached Zuma’s lawyers last weekend to assist them.
Told by prosecutor Herman Broodryk that Khwezi had denied knowing Sithole, Ngcobo retorted, “Then she is truly forgetful. I don’t know what else to call it when Sandile, pastor Mbambo and Cyril Xaba [youth committee chairperson] remember but she doesn’t.”
The trial may be determined by the judge’s assessment of the credibility of the accused, the complainant or witnesses.
The public gallery — filled mostly by Zuma supporters — behaved like congregants in a charismatic church with approving murmurs and nods of their heads when they heard testimony against the complainant.
Her sexual history could be a factor when the criminal case yardstick — beyond reasonable doubt — is invoked to judge whether Zuma is guilty of rape or not, though the state is likely to try to strike it from the record.
If Zuma’s foes believed that the refusal to discharge the case against him made him a dead man walking, this week his chances of walking out of the court a free man were resurrected.