‘Should have sided with protesters’
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma and female ANC ministers have come under fire from opposition parties in Parliament for allegedly failing to protect rape victims.
Opposition MPs yesterday didn’t hold back in attacking Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini, who is also the president of the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL), and Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane for protecting Zuma during a rape protest at the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) operations results centre earlier this month.
Four women held a silent protest as Zuma was delivering his speech in Pretoria.
The protesters, who the ANC ministers said were EFF members, held placards next to Zuma regarding his rape acquittal in 2006.
EFF, DA and IFP parliamentarians slammed Zuma and female ANC ministers for not speaking out against the rape culture in the country.
During the debate on Women’s Day in the National Assembly yesterday, IFP MP Liezl van der Merwe said it was a shame that female ANC ministers had sided with Zuma against the female protesters.
She said it was unacceptable that ANC ministers had clashed openly and attacked one another.
Dlamini and Mokonyane had had a stand-off with Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula for security breaches at the IEC centre.
The EFF’s Mmabatho Mokause also criticised Dlamini and Mokonyane for not supporting the protesters during a time when the country was facing a rape scourge.
“We have the minister of water affairs and the president of the ANCWL who did nothing when four young women were protesting against the rape culture in South Africa,” said Mokause.
She said that when Zuma was facing the rape trial in 2006. none of the top women in the country stood up for the woman who accused him of rape.
Mokause said society must take a stand against Zuma, Dlamini and Mokonyane.
The DA’s Dene Robinson said the ANCWL had stood with Zuma rather than with the protesters.
She said Dlamini, as ANCWL president, had not conducted herself properly by opposing the protest. In fact, she had fought with her cabinet colleagues over security breaches.
Robinson said that indicated that the women’s league was not advocating justice for women.
The opposition parties backed former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils’s lawsuit against Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association chairman Kebby Maphatsoe regarding the Zuma rape case.
In court this week, Maphatsoe admitted that he had lied about Kasrils and reached a R500 000 settlement with him.
This was after he made statements in 2014 that Kasrils was a counter-revolutionary and had orchestrated the rape case against Zuma.
The money will be paid into a trust fund for Khwezi, the woman who laid the rape charge against Zuma.