revelations titillate in zuma trial

SABCnews and Sapa

March 9, 2006: The Johannesburg High Court has heard that the complainant in the rape case against former deputy president Jacob Zuma, is a lesbian. This has emerged during her cross examination by the defence counsel relating to her sexual history.

She says her first sexual experience was at the age of five when she and a friend took a boy of the same age to have sex with him in a toilet. This is contained in a transcript she had written with an intention of publishing a book about her life experiences. However, she refers to her childhood experience as also being rape.

Lawyer shocks accuser

Jacob Zuma's lawyer shocked the woman by producing today the first 16 pages of an autobiography she was working on.

Kemp J Kemp had asked the woman whether she was sexually experienced and asked her many lovers she had had. The woman said she considered herself a lesbian and had had about five male lovers. Kemp then handed in as evidence the document and asked the woman to study it.

She replied: "Can I just say... I find it disturbing that this private document is here and how relevant this is here. I have an idea how it came to be here, but I find it disturbing."

Kemp pressed on and said that judging by a note in the front of the manuscript, the names in the book had not yet been changed. The woman said she did not know how to proceed with answering the question because she did not know what the implications were for people named in the book. "What are you going to do with these names?" she asked