Mother of Zuma’s rape accuser tells of exile and trauma

THE mother of President Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser opened her heart this week for the first time since the devastating trial eight years ago.

The mother, who may not be named to protect her daughter’s identity, spoke about the trauma and upheaval the trial brought to her life and that of her daughter, dubbed Khwezi by the media.

After five years spent in the Netherlands and Tanzania following the trial, the mother is determined to live a quiet life in the one-room structure in a KwaZulu-Natal township that she and her daughter now call home.

The mother spoke about the trial that wrecked her daughter’s life and plummeted Zuma — then deputy president of the ANC and eventually acquitted of the rape charges — into the scandalous position of having to explain his sexual conduct in court.

“Somebody must win, somebody must lose,” she said. “In a case like this there’s no draw. I am not trained as a lawyer to say whether she was treated fairly or not.”

But it was when she started talking about her recent exile with her daughter that the yearning for home and the bewilderment of being banished to a foreign country emerged.

After Zuma’s acquittal on May 5 2006 in the High Court in Johannesburg, Khwezi and her mother fled South Africa, furtively arriving at OR Tambo airport a mere 20 minutes before their flight would carry them to the Nether- lands, where they had won asylum on humanitarian grounds.

“I can’t manage bitterness. So I chose not to be bitter. But the way we left was very painful,” she said.

She had initially returned from political exile in 1990 without her husband, who had died in a car accident in Zimbabwe five years earlier.

During the interview, there were two topics she did not want to discuss: Zuma and her daughter.

She said she did not know whether

Somebody must win, somebody must lose. In a case like this there’s no draw

justice had been done during the rape trial but she had to accept the outcome “because law is law”.

The political turmoil brought about by the trial contributed to the women’s decision to pack their bags and seek refuge abroad — without the chance of taking along a few sentimental possessions.

She said she had not anticipated that the trial would cause so much havoc in the country and fuel the ANC’s factional battles ahead of the 2007 Polokwane conference, where Zuma defeated former president Thabo Mbeki to ascend to the ANC presidency.

“We were thinking we would stay [in

the Netherlands] for three months, but it became clear things would not be okay.

“I am a coward . . . you feel like pleading for mercy,” she said.

Their modest two-bedroom Durban home — which has since been sold — was burgled twice during the trial.

Now she says she would rather stay in a back room than remain in an unfamiliar country.

“I was longing to come back home because of language and cultural differences in Europe. We ended up in Tanzania for a year because it was closer to home . . . it was better than being in Europe.

“I was missing home very much . . . and to think that when I die no one was going to close my eyes and where I would be buried was so scary,” she said.

She spoke about the stress of sharing a barely furnished tiny back room with her daughter.

“If you stay in one room, you think about space. I’m very stressed, though, of course, in order for one to keep one’s sanity, you’ll tell yourself to be at peace with oneself because this is also home.”

Life is tough, but at least her daughter is working.

I would like him to no longer exist, to be spared seeing his face

Asked whether the two of them had been shunned by the ANC since their return, she said she did not get that impression. She had been in touch with a few of her ANC comrades and they had “been very welcoming”.

She did not want to say how she felt about Zuma: “Let’s just not talk about that.”

During the trial, she testified that she had confronted Zuma — at a meeting organised by ANC treasurer Zweli Mkhize a few days after the rape charge was laid — about the sexual encounter he had with her daughter.

During their meeting, she started by asking him “why he did such a thing” and Zuma said he was sorry.

She told the court that she “felt a bit of relief” after Zuma apologised because she thought he was really sorry.

But her daughter was less forgiving, telling a Dutch newspaper after the trial that she felt betrayed by Zuma.

“I wish he was dead. I would like him to no longer exist, to be spared seeing his face popping up in newspapers,” she told the newspaper.

Khwezi was not pleased about her mother giving an interview this week and later asked this newspaper to “please leave my mother alone and stop calling her”.

“You had no right to come to our home,” she said.