...continues
To date, this newspaper has chosen not to comment on the sagas surrounding former Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Virtually everything that could be said about Mr Zuma, in support and in opposition, has been stated and requires no further analysis here.
As far as the allegations of corruption against Mr Zuma go, The Southern Cross invests its confidence in an independent and sagacious judiciary whose final findings will reflect the truth as far as it can be proven, and provide justice as far as the established truth will allow. We trust that justice will prevail, and the outcome of that case be accepted with good grace by all.
Our confidence in the judicial system, however, has been undermined by events in the rape case against Mr Zuma. Events in the Johannesburg High Court force us to speak out, whether or not the final outcome will reflect justice served or denied.
Following the cross-examination by Mr Zuma's lawyer, Kemp J Kemp SC, we have no other way but to conclude that the victim in this case has been every South African woman who has been raped, every woman who will be raped, and every family that is tormented by the effects of sexual assault.
While Mr Zuma is entitled too a vigorous legal defence, the latitude Mr Kemp took for granted in his attempts to destroy the complainant's credibility gives cause for disquiet.
Simply put, by calling into question the complainant's previous experiences and allegations of rape—specifically those that under our law constitute statutory rape (that is sexual intercourse with a woman under 16, regardless of the act's consensual nature)—Mr Kemp called into question all allegations of rape.
By effectively proposing that the complainant invited rape—if that is what her encounter with Mr Zuma was (he claims sexual relations with the woman were consensual)—by virtue of her dress, conduct and sexual history, Mr Kemp virtually has granted aspiring rapists carte blanche to commit sexual assault, and reasonably expect to get away with it.
Of course, Mr Kemp's strategy was perfectly within what is permissible within South Africa's judicial system. The systematic demolition of an accuser's good character is a standard practice in rape cases. Justice Willem van der Merwe therefore either found no cause for objection to this line of questioning, or did not muster the fortitude to challenge the status quo by putting a stop to this line of examination.
With every question and every insinuation by which Mr Kemp called into question a woman's charge of having been raped, he perpetuated the assault not only on Mr Zuma's accuser, but also on all rape victims who have not been believed. More than that, his line of questioning will have discouraged victims from demanding that their rapists face justice—this at a time when rape is rampant but rarely reported in South Africa, and when conviction rates already are distressingly low.
Mr Kemp, and all those who believe that his line of defence is appropriate, may placate their conscience by persuading themselves that they protect their clients' right to have their interests served by all necessary means, for the benefits of justice. The are fooling themselves. The rights of their clients must not come at the price of violating the rights of others.
Such strategies as employed by Mr Kemp in the Zuma case deny justice to people far more vulnerable than Mr Zuma.
And that is the ultimate rape of South Africa.
Gunther Simmermacher | The Southern Cross
The only problem I have with this editorial is it not being available on the paper's Web site, last updated in September 2005. Deserving a wider readership, Simmermacher offers Catholic—and non-Catholic—subscribers unvarnished writing, even should he occasionally feel the need to placate the zealots.
With the Mail & Guardian, which likens Kemp's tactics to "...a line of questioning straight out of the Dark Ages" (and reminds us that "....fewer than 5% of child murders in the year ending May 2005 led to a prosecution"), this is one of the better editorials to flow from the Zuma trial.
