Trying to make sense of Zuma

So yeah. According to Judge Wilhem van der Merwe (quite the name, hey?) Jacob Zuma is not a rapist. Good. I’m glad. It’s kind of a disturbing realization when you find out that you wanted someone to be convicted. Why would I wish either a rape or jail on anyone?
And I realize that the reason why I wanted him to be convicted so badly is because I wanted a symbol, some sort of blow to all the men who rape women. Something to say that no matter how powerful you are, you can not get away with rape. And the problem with this case is it became about symbols for everyone. But Zuma is just a man and his accuser is just a woman and it is not fair to anybody. Much like what is going on in the Duke lacrosse case. Its so easy to forget that these are just people. That the boys are not all evil white boys (and I have definitely read editorials about how evil all lacrosse players are) and the woman is not all underprivileged black women.
And the thing about Zuma is that it became so tied up in women’s rights, and culture and ethnicity, and power struggles within the ANC. Zuma is a Zulu and the ANC is mostly Xhosa. There were some people who said that President Thabo Mbeki was forcing Zuma out because he’s a racist. Then there were people who said that it was a conspiracy by the Zulu Inkatha Freedom party to punish Zuma and to keep Zulus from defecting to the ANC.
Honestly, the ANC does not seem that well organized. From everything I’ve read it seems like a miscommunication. Which is a weird sort of limbo area between rape and not rape. Not that I have any idea what I'm talking about. No one knows what happened except Zuma and his accuser and even then memory is so fragile…
It really goes to show that a law court is no way to find out the (capital T) Truth.
(if I knew as much as my friend Jennifer I would start talking about post modern philosophy and how there is no such thing as one capital T Truth anymore and all we have now are our own little t truths. But I don’t know that much. But the idea of TRUTH v. truth is something I would love to explore in a play someday. Stay tuned.)
Redardless Zuma is a big efing idiot who should stay far away from public office.
1. The man had unprotected sex with an HIV positive woman.
2. he then showered to reduce his chance of getting the disease.
a. granted, the chance a man has of getting HIV this way is something like 1 in 100.
b. But that’s still like playing Russian roulette.
3. He said that wearing a sarong means that a woman is asking for sex.
And he said these stupid stupid things in a country with an incredibly high HIV rate and a HUGE rape problem. We were talking in class the other day about how pretty much every play written in the past 5 years deals with rape and someone asked why it was so prevalent as a theme and the only answer was “well, because, its incredibly prevalent in the country.”
And anyway, the real reason Zuma was forced out of government was due to corruption charges that he will face in July.
So yeah, moral of the story is that I have no clue. But I do know that going to the protest on Monday morning and then spending 4 hours glued to the TV waiting for the judgment to be passed down was one of the most emotionally draining days of my life.