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Separation of powers must be respected
March 26, 2006 Edition 1
The Jacob Zuma rape trial has thrown sharp relief on a number of areas. Not least is the extent to which rape is a blight on the nation, a blight that shows no limits to its extent and scale of depravity.
Attention has been refocused on the fact that we live in a land where more than 55 000 rapes were reported in the past two years. No one knows how many more went unreported, but the experts tell us it is at least seven for every woman with the courage to lay a charge.
However, even coming forth and being prepared to submit to examination, questioning and the trial of the alleged rapist is not the extent of the ordeal. As The Sunday Independent reported last week, by focusing on one teenager's ordeal, police are often unwilling, or unable, to conduct a proper investigation.
The kindly would point to the massive caseloads carried by police officers; others would ask where the taxpayers' money is going if a girl can be raped and her family then find that the police show no interest in talking to them, even when the complainant's father has dug up information that could be of great help.
In this case the police heap insult and apathy upon outrage, and ignore their duty to serve. Shame on them.
But also at issue is the blurring of the political saga starring Zuma, and the rape trial with Zuma as the accused. High political drama is just that - drama in which the masses can hold forth and pitch in with their penny's worth.
A criminal trial is another matter altogether, and we heap scorn on the judicial process and the officers of the court at our peril.
Not that, any longer, we expect judges to haul commentators into court at the slightest whiff of contempt, but the separation of powers must be respected and fought for.
Zuma's supporters may cry foul and regard his being charged as part of a conspiracy against him, but it must be understood that, once in court, politics falls away and the legal process takes over.
Which brings us to the much-maligned decision to allow the defence team to savage the victim over allegations regarding her sexual history. It is unusual for a court to make such an allowance, but the presiding judge is entitled to that decision.
Let us call for a changing of the law, as some have done and as is their right, but let us not pillory the court for applying the law of the land.
Judges are indeed appointed and not anointed, and can be fallible. That is why the legal process allows for appeals and the judgment of judgments by higher courts, and the equality of all before the bench.
That, in many ways, is the basis of what so many South Africans gave so much for.
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