"No Zuma, not everyone is doing it", Sunday Times Editorial, May 14 2006

We can take courage from the way we have survived the ordeal of ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma's trial, which ended on Monday with the unambiguous verdict that he is not guilty of rape.

There is little to celebrate, however, in the way that the former deputy president and his followers have conducted themselves, and no reason to hope for better.

The ordeal inflicted on us by this man who would be king - apparently at almost any price in conscience or principle - is far from over.

As the sordid details of Zuma's misdirected appetites unfolded in court, South Africans took up the issues raised in vibrant debate in the media and among themselves, testing attitudes on justice, gender, sexual politics and political power in a cathartic babble that has left us enriched.

We largely ignored the crude tactics of Zuma's thuggish entourage and resisted their appalling bid to tribalise the issue of his guilt or innocence. The media space they won was a measure of society's abhorrence and not its approval.

With shameful contempt for judicial process, they hounded Zuma's accuser outside the court every day - to the point that it is the threat of their revenge that has forced authorities to put her into protective exile. Yet they now claim the right to anoint Zuma, who has only lauded their support, as President Thabo Mbeki's successor.

Judge Willem van der Merwe's measured conduct of the trial, his clear and unequivocal judgment command the respect that the Constitution demands for the judiciary.

We accept, as everyone must, that Judge Van der Merwe has found the truth and done his profession a great service. But we urge that those for whom this verdict has been convenient as well as correct will show the same respect for the courts if ever justice thwarts their will.

We accept, too, that it has been a difficult week for the anti-rape lobby, whose courageous court vigil in the face of Zuma's mob gave comfort to his troubled accuser and also to the many, many women who carry the lonely burden of their own violation in secret. Zuma's guilt would have been convenient to their cause, so it is to their credit that they, too, have accepted the verdict unconditionally.

But it must be remembered as Zuma attempts now to mitigate the damage to his reputation that, while the court found that no rape was committed, it did not condone his behaviour towards a vulnerable woman.

And as he tries to draw a false screen of moral relativism across his record, we would do well to continue to hold him to account for his own behaviour.

In proclaiming, during his artfully choreographed public apology, that he was just a human being, Zuma sought to drag all of us down to his own level of moral turpitude. That is an offensive defence that denigrates every man who would have offered the accuser the help then that Zuma now sanctimoniously proclaims she deserves.

If Zuma believes all human beings are as much victims of their appetites as he is, then he is even less deserving of respect than his trial suggests. It is a view that compounds the doubts sown in Schabir Shaik's fraud trial about his judgment about people, money and morality.

If he and his supporters believe others are as culpable as he is suspected of being on corruption, then let them name the names. It is quite unacceptable to proclaim a level of common guilt and thus seek to brand everyone with some level of original sin.

"Everyone is doing it" is exactly the philosophy that those seeking to lift South Africa to higher moral ground fear. It is the argument that blights the efforts of many good women and men to transform post-apartheid South Africa and provide the better life for all.

This affable man has put us through the traumas of Shaik's conviction for a fraud that would never have been possible without his own political presence, and this latest trial on an unfounded allegation of rape. His pending prosecution for corruption will be no less harrowing for a new nation still seeking its own particular moral compass.

Though he charges conspiracy, there is enough evidence to know that a better man would have avoided the traps he alleges his enemies have laid.

The leader that South Africa needs to build upon the foundations laid by Nelson Mandela and Mbeki must have, and demonstrate, the rare levels of personal discipline and moral courage that Zuma so far has failed to reveal.

Source: The Sunday Times

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