Judge Acquits S. African of Rape

A judge acquitted the deputy head of South Africa’s ruling party of rape charges Monday in a trial that divided the country and revealed a deep split over the future leadership of the party and the nation.

A jubilant Jacob Zuma stood before a crowd of dancing supporters outside Johannesburg’s High Court after the verdict, holding two microphones in one fist, singing an old anti-apartheid song his supporters had blared onto the street throughout his trial: “Bring Me My Machine Gun.”

“Today the bad dreams have evaporated,” Zuma said, speaking in Zulu.

The whereabouts of his accuser, a 31-year-old family friend who is HIV-positive, were not known, though local newspapers have suggested she may go into exile for her protection. At one point during the trial, Zuma supporters burned her portrait.

Zuma backers clad in traditional Zulu animal skin clothing sprang to their feet in the courtroom and cheered when Judge Willem van der Merwe announced his verdict. Women ululated. One camera in the courtroom focused on the tears pouring down the cheeks of one of the complainant’s supporters.

The judge accepted Zuma’s version that his accuser had agreed to sex. He scathingly rejected her complaint, saying that she was a strong person, not the “meek, mild, submissive person she was made out to be,” and that she had a history of making false rape accusations. Anti-rape groups said the judge’s findings would set their cause back years.

Van der Merwe also strongly criticized Zuma, 64, for having sex with an HIV-positive woman half his age who was a family friend and not his wife.

The verdict does not end Zuma’s political troubles. Analysts suggested that his claim that the woman had conveyed a desire for sex by wearing a short skirt and his view that he cut his risk of getting AIDS by taking a shower afterward had tainted him and undermined his ambition to succeed Thabo Mbeki as president in 2009.

Zuma, former deputy president and former head of the National AIDS Council, will face another major hurdle in July when he stands trial on corruption charges.

Rape is a hot issue in this country, which has the highest rate of reported rapes in the world, and the Zuma trial was perhaps the most contentious since the end of the apartheid era, dividing many South Africans and revealing a deep split in the ruling African National Congress party.

The verdict Monday was broadcast live on radio and television while thousands of Zuma’s supporters, many bused in from his stronghold of KwaZuluNatal, waited outside the court.

Before the verdict, some commentators described an atmosphere of national tension.

“If he is found not guilty of rape, do he and his supporters get to run the country next?” Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day, wrote in a column. “If he is found guilty, does a tidal wave of poor and rural and traditional black rage break over our tender young democracy and its brittle institutions? There’s no point in telling ourselves we aren’t nervous. We are.”

After the verdict, women’s rape support groups said they had been flooded with calls.

“We’re just angry,” said Chantel Cooper, director of Rape Crisis Cape Town. “We’re getting phone calls from absolute strangers saying, ‘What can we do?’ A lot of women are very frustrated.

“We were horrified when he [the judge] said she was sick and needed help. It points to the fact that what happens quite often in rape cases is that you focus on the survivor and you leave it up to her to defend herself and no questions are asked of the perpetrator,” Cooper said.

She said that throughout the trial, many victims of rape had contacted the organization saying they would not report the crime because of the trauma suffered by Zuma’s accuser.

The judge defended his decision to allow a long and intense cross-examination of the woman about her sexual history, saying it was relevant to her credibility and motives.

He was critical of interest groups and supporters on both sides who broadcast their views while the trial was going on.

The One in Nine Campaign, which draws its name from claims that only one in nine South African rape victims reports the crime, said it was disappointed but not surprised by the verdict because of the “relentless and invasive crossexamination aimed at discrediting her as a witness.”

Zuma used to be head of South Africa’s Moral Regeneration Campaign, a group designed to cut the spread of HIV and AIDS by a return to traditional African values. During the trial, he told the court he went ahead with sex despite not having a condom because in Zulu culture it was considered risky to leave a woman in an aroused state. A man could be accused of rape for doing so, he testified.

Outside the court, Zuma attacked the media and others who he said had an interest in undermining him, a clear reference to opponents within the African National Congress. “A person who is charged remains innocent until proven otherwise. This is one of the golden rules of our constitution, and the press broke this rule,” Zuma said.