BOOK REVIEW: Khwezi book reveals how rape accuser was violated by the law
Zuma benefited from patriarchal court system and cultural discomfort, writes Sue Grant-Marshall
KHWEZI: The Remarkable Story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo Redi Tlhabi Jonathan Ball Redi Tlhabi’s book on Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo — best known until now as Khwezi, President Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser — not only returns her identity, but questions society’s attitudes and aspects of the judicial system. Tlhabi effectively puts SA on trial for what it thinks and what it does not bother to think deeply about — the scourge of rape. Through the voices of female struggle comrades, the book explores the sexual exploitation they endured in ANC camps in exile. Women’s bodies were battlefields; they were "taken as pieces of meat", she writes. In a sense, Kuzwayo was a child soldier. She was raped when she was five, 12 and 13 years old. Tlhabi — the 2013 winner of the Alan Paton Award and a former radio talk show host — believes the outcome of the Zuma rape trial was "a triumph of law over justice". She says: "Don’t misunderstand me. I am not criticising our courts and I think that our Consti...
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