The state completed its closing arguments in the Jacob Zuma rape trial on Friday, asking the Johannesburg High Court to find him guilty.
Prosecutor Charin de Beer told Judge Willem van der Merwe that Zuma’s version of events should not be considered the truth.
Zuma is accused of raping a 31-year-old HIV-positive woman in the guest bedroom of his Johannesburg home on November 2 last year.
Zuma’s defence is that the two had consensual sex in his bedroom.
De Beer said Zuma left out any reference to sex in his statement to police, preferring to say he and the complainant ”enjoyed each other’s company privately”, on purpose.
”He was playing for more time by wording the statement as he did,” said De Beer.
”He still hoped to persuade the complainant to withdraw the charge and wanted to find out what evidence the police had against him,” De Beer said.
She said he cannot hide behind the explanation that the wording was on the instruction of his attorney Michael Hulley.
”He is an intelligent man … He held some of the most senior posts in the country,” De Beer said. He cannot now hide behind his attorney, she continued.
De Beer also asked the judge to reject the testimony of two men, Durban estate agent Thulani Mpontshane and Lungisa Henry Manzi, who now heads the eThekwini metro emergency services. Mpontshane claimed to have been the complainant’s lover when she was younger. Manzi claims that she undressed and tried to get into his bath.
De Beer said the two men, who were flatmates at the time, contradicted each other and the evidence should be rejected.
She also said Hulley had lied in a radio interview about not knowing of any official police probe into the alleged rape ”because they hoped the charge would go away”.
She disagreed with Zuma that he did not know what Hulley would say in the interview, saying he did not want to admit publicly he had had sex with an HIV-positive woman.
De Beer reiterated it is significant that Hulley was not called to testify, in order to back Zuma’s claims that he did not show two police officers the guest bedroom when asked where the alleged rape took place.
It is clear an apology Zuma made to the complainant’s mother was because he had raped her, De Beer said.
Zuma had testified that he apologised to the mother because he had sexual intercourse with her daughter and because of the effect it had had on the mother. He had said during his cross-examination he did not explain what the apology was for because they both knew what it was about.
De Beer said she had presented 432 pages of heads in the trial.
The trial has been running for 82 hours over a period of 25 days thus far.
Zuma’s lawyer Kemp J Kemp has started giving his closing arguments. He told Van der Merwe he would not read the heads, but focus on certain aspects of the trial and explain his reasons for this. — Sapa