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by Babalwa Sipuka

Special to the G21

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G21 AFRICA - ZUMA'S SHAME & OURS: New writer BABALWA SIPUKA reports on the recent trial that rocked South Africa's political establishment.

Butterworth, SOUTH AFRICA - Nothing has revealed with clear distinction the social character of our country more than the rape trial of our former Deputy President, Jacob Zuma. The judge has acquitted Zuma from the charges, basing his reasoning on the past of the complainant who, it became apparent during the trial, had in the past accused several men of raping her without substance. The complainant, who now has been flown outside the country for her protection, does suffer from some form of sexual dysphoria that perhaps even goes deeper to an identity crisis.

Zuma's defence attorneys brilliantly capitalised on this instability to argue that she was not a reliable witness and the court took argument that as a case for reasonable doubt to acquit Zuma. The defence exposed the ãthrough other witnesses' testimoniesãas a psychologically unstable person, stopping short of accusing her of delusions of grandeur in a quite humiliating manner. The usual hullaboo from civl pressure groups took exception to the way she was treated at court, but the judge, who happened to be a gobemouche conservative male, was convinced by the defence's case. Whether he was right or wrong is a moot point.

What was clear in court was that the complainant is an individual who feels alienated and subsequently entrapped since the rape. Because today's society has no spiritual or ideological answer to individual's experience of alienation, women like her fall easy for men, especially those whose social power promises answers to their predicaments. It is their rotten luck that they discover the hard way that these men are ruthless predators in sheep's clothing.

Zuma was a friend of the complainant's father. The two men were together in exile during the apartheid years. The complainant argued that she regarded Zuma as a father figure and so was stunned and dumfounded when Zuma raped her. She felt confused and hurt, but was afraid to create such a powerful enemy as the second highest politician in the country. But, after talking it over with friends, she felt reporting the case was the right thing to do. And so the case started.

Zuma's supporters may take confidence and every opportunity to capitalise on her instability as a vindication of their hero but the rest of us no longer respect Mr Zuma. He remains morally reprehensible, and the so-called stigma on his reputation is comeuppance for his actions.

He had no business, in the first place, involving himself sexually with a woman young enough to be his child. Secondly, the woman saw him as a father figure.? And. thirdly, he has the temerity of admitting to having sex with her without protection - though he was aware she was HIV positive.

Meantime, Mr. Zuma is supposed to be a leading force behind the fight of AIDS in our country. Fuck off! We don't need that kind of person to be our next President or hold any high political office, for that matter.

But this is a moral judgement, not a criminal one. The court's duty was to judge him on a criminal case of rape, not a moral one. Hence. I feel - based on the court evidence - the not guilty sentence was justified. There were reasonable doubts as to whether the sexual encounter was consensual.

What I loath is the fact that a not guilty verdict for Mr. Zuma is seen as a necessarily a condemnation of the complainant. What most people fail to see is that the kind of psychological instability exhibited by the complainant is a symptom and an indictment of a larger problem in our society.

How often do we hear of children being raped in our society - evidence in the Zuma trial showed that the complainant suffered at least one real rape before she was thirteen. The rape of children happens too often in our society for us to rejoice when a morally depraved egomaniac gets acquitted of rape charges; it also does not acquit us, as a society in large, from blame.

A simple analysis of rape victim statistics in our country testifies to the fact that too many young girls undergo devastating rape experience as young as three years of age. Even if we were to take just a marginal percentage of these cases to be actually true, they'd still stand as a blatant indictment against our society.

This is not a political matter; nor is it a race issue. It is a glaring indictment of our society at large. South African men should take the larger portion of the blame because it's young girls' uncles, brothers, and even fathers who are raping them. Our news is saturated with such cases and the silence of bystanders is just as reprehensible as the guilt of the perpetrators. Men in our society fail their women; they dismally fail our children.

Our women also must take some responsibility and blame. Most of them condemn themselves to the vortexes and seductions of power by opportunism - like the complainant in Zuma's trial. She wanted to be seen among the high circles of the society. They want to be seen in high classes, rendering themselves vulnerable to these kinds of abuse. But to pretend that these vortexes of power are not a common thing in our societies is to bury our heads in sand. We all know about the 'sugar daddy syndrome,' which happens to be the high transmitter of sexual diseases in our country. Adult males sleep with girls as young twelve in exchange for pocket money on a daily basis, spreading the disease like fire on dry grass.

Rape is always about power; about a criminal violation of another's self-autonomy, hence so difficult to prove. It's preponderance, whether proven or not, is always a shame on the society, especially on men.

A shame for violating the trust of those they're supposed to be caring for. A shame for scavenging on the weaknesses of immature and vulnerable girls. A shame on you, Mr. Zuma, and your political vandals, those loutish squatters outside your court cases who call themselves 'Friends of Zuma.' They're a disgrace to our collective motives and a clear demonstration of a challenge that still remains in rebuilding our civic conscience and respect for other people's human rights. Shame on you fuckers! Who're not men enough to stand your ground with real women. You should be ashamed; you've not earned any right to gloat.

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