Why, a decade on, a new book on Zuma’s rape trial has finally hit home
Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (Khwezi), the woman who accused Zuma of rape as the ANC she loved stayed largely silent, is now given a voice, writes Shireen Hassim
In 2007, barely a year after the man who went on to become SA’s president, Jacob Zuma, was acquitted on a charge of raping a young woman called "Khwezi" (the name given to Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo during her rape trial), gender activist Mmatshilo Motsei published The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court. The book was an unsparing account of a society that allowed a prominent man to get away with acts of violence; of a criminal and justice system that was broken for the vast majority of those who were sexually abused, raped and tortured; and of a political system that had lost its compass. Motsei was eminently qualified to write the book, as a survivor herself and as one of the path-breaking group of activists who had begun the movement to end violence against women. Few read her book. Those that did were feminist activists and scholars who felt that she had given voice to their concerns, that she had released a collective howl from the gut. Hardcore Zuma loyalists almost certainly did not ...
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