Many tourism businesses realise that the principles of sustainable development can make good business, as well as moral, sense. Increasing numbers of tour operators are accepting that they have a responsibility to society and the environment, globally and locally, as well as to their shareholders.

The African National Congress said on Monday (May 15) that its deputy president, Jacob Zuma, would be resuming his duties "without delay" after he stepped down from active duty while his rape trial was under way. Zuma was acquitted of rape in the Johannesburg High Court on May 8. The party also poured cold water on suggestions that any member of the ANC encouraged the complainant in the rape case to lay a charge against Zuma, reports the Mail and Guardian.

Monday, 8 May, 2006

Today is a sad day in my life. Not in mine alone, in a lot of other people’s too, I’m sure, some for different reasons no doubt, but some, I suspect for the same reason as me. Today also marks the last day of our relationship. I am afraid I can’t write in you anymore, without risking incriminating myself. Who knows in whose hands these pages might one day end up? And who knows what unreasonable deductions they may seek to make about me, after leafing through you. I am afraid I can no longer share my innermost thoughts with you. Not my joys either, or my traumas, or my nightmares borne of my past and present. I’m afraid I can no longer come to you at the end of a harrowing day, to tell you, in that honest and sincere way, I seem able to tell only you. I’m afraid that if I should ever get raped, again, and cry wolf (because there really is one), they might make you admissible evidence, and that you might just contribute to my downfall. It’s not because I don’t love you anymore. Not that you have not provided an outlet for my frustrations, and emotional turmoil. If there’s anyone who knows all my highs and lows, it is you. It’s just that this place that I love with all my heart, has made it somewhat unsafe for us to carry on. But I thought it would be unfair if I left without telling you, the best I know how, the reasons why I have to pack away my commas and exclamation marks. I hope you understand.

Today I woke up in a place that said to me be free
so long as I kept my mouth shut and made no
demands that my freedom actually be taken seriously

I woke up in a place that said be what you want to be
so long as what I wanted to be did not include
me being a woman who wears a kanga,
has a history of mental illness
is prone to forgetting
or has in the past been raped

I woke up to a dream, and I realised that I am stronger than I was yesterday
but this dream rapidly turned into a nightmare
right in front of my eyes as I began to see
that I had in fact been rendered much weaker than I was,
just yesterday

I woke up in a place where it’s the size of your heart that counts not your fists
and realised that no matter how big my heart was,
these fists would continue to find a landing pad on my face
and that if I am to survive, I needed to pack a punch in mine.

Because yesterday I was digging for gold, and today I am wearing it
on my wrists, around my ankles, across my heart
it shackles my every step,
because now it is expected that I wear my chains with pride,
in line with the dictates of my culture
Yesterday I was burning with frustration; today I am growing big business
and this business of growing ever more sick and tired fuels my anxiety

I woke up and realised that I don’t need a gun to make you listen
because the one that hangs from your crotch
isbhamu somdoko as you call it, is more potent
and if that does not make me listen, what else will?

And even if I have nothing, this place can give me everything
on condition that I give it in return every inch of my entire being,
until I am left in the end with much less than what I had when I started.

All I need do is believe
in nothing, because nothing much is worth believing in anymore
not the comfort in the knowledge that my elders will not hurt me
not the comfort in the fact that if they do the law will protect me
just the ugly reality, that depending on how its spun
every sexual act I am forced to engage in,
no matter how many times I say no
will be construed as having being consensual

Today I woke up in a place whose cheering can be heard on the other side of the world
but whose screams land on deaf ears inside my home
A place where my brother is my brother no matter what
and my sister is someone who does not matter, no matter what

Today I woke up in a place that flows with courage
but drowns under showers of cowardice
That laughs,
at me often
that’s cried
sometimes with me, (well only a handful)
that says it’s okay
go ahead do to her what you please
we will find something in her history
to make her allegations sound like a fairy tale

Today I woke up in a place that sings with hope to the rest of the world
but mutters despair to itself
And I smiled because
well because this morning left me a tad haggard,
and smile to stave off my tears is all I can do sometimes
when I’m feeling like this, besides I hear,
South Africans are creating a new dawn everyday
oh how I wish this dawn would cast its rays my direction too.

Today I woke up in South Africa
and so help me I am never ever going back to sleep
lest those who relish in plotting against me should
devise more schemes while I slumber
lest I miss in my sleep a chance to be part of a legion
that will create for myself, my sisters, my aunts, my mothers, my daughters
a solid string of incandescent dawns that are truly
Alive with possibility
Unlike the one I woke up to today
that seems to me to be languishing in a state of atrophy

So you see why this full stop I am about to write has to be my last, from now on I am holding inside me everything I otherwise would have shared with you, so long.

* Lindiwe Nkutha is an author and a woman in the world

* Please send comments to

I am angry. I am pissed off. I have been trying to write about this Zuma debacle for months, but have been plagued by unease and self-censorship, and I have remained silent, while seething inside. The polarization into two camps of the country, into those who claim to be speaking on K’s behalf, and those who have out and out turned their backs on her has me bothered. I am angry and irritated with K herself and those surrounding her. I am angry with the men and women hurling stones and burning effigies, but all of this not new, because for ages I have been seething inside. Today, nudged by Judge Willem Van der Merwe, my anger can no longer be contained, it has become resolute, and I’m spilling it on this page.

But I have to start by being nice, so here is my attempt at being just that. Van der Merwe’s finding that the state failed to prove its case, and that the accused should be acquitted is correct. His decision on that score cannot be faulted, though many feminists may disagree. I believe that, legally, the State failed to discharge the onus of proof. But whether the decision could have been different, save for the misogynist reasoning, the question should be asked, but that’s another issue. I suspect the answer would still be a resounding no. We would still have landed with the same decision - this acquittal.

I’m not one who succumbs to misogynist notions about what women should wear, how they should talk, in order to avoid being raped. But I did have issues with the complainant and the state’s paltry efforts in dealing with this case. Such lackluster efforts intensify my anger. I am angry because for too long we have been subjected to misogynist reasoning, shrouded in the notion of the neutrality, objectivity and impartiality of judges, a notion which obscures the fact that judges make political decisions and these decisions are informed by their political and social contexts. We need to acknowledge this fact.

The law does not have one single meaning, and it often differs and is in the habit of being contradictory, depending on who is applying it and to whom they are applying it. Today the chilling effect of Van der Merwe’s words has left me reeling. Most judges believe that they need to uphold the distinction between law and politics, identify objective criteria and thereby create a factual distance between their own personal views, opinions and political philosophy. Professor Griffith, in his work on the ‘Politics of the Judiciary’, points out that the notion of impartiality has been regarded as an absence of personal bias or prejudice and the exclusion of “irrelevant” considerations such as a judge’s political views. Accordingly, when a judge acts like a ‘political, economic, and social eunuch’ with no interest in the world outside the courtroom, he/she is deemed to have delivered a fair and impartial judgment. Thus, Van der Merwe’s argument is that he has been fair and impartial by removing himself from the outside world. He makes the point strongly at the outset, as though this vindicates him, and that by behaving like a socio-political eunuch, he suddenly becomes impartial. But we know that this is not what has happened here.

We know that there are no determinate legal outcomes based on neutral, general principles and often judges rely on subjective factors in order to find solutions. We also know that different judges selectively rely on different factors – in this case the use of underwear and kanga’s. This has been the case with Van der Merwe. When faced with the choice of either starting from a premise of a women’s right to be free from violence, or from some apparently neutral legal basis, such as ‘judicial discretion’ or ‘reasonableness’ he chooses the latter, failing at every step of the way to acknowledge constitutional rights to dignity and freedom.

It is imperative that as women fighting the scourge of violence, we should be at the forefront of broadcasting the correct message. It is important that we interrogate our blind faith in justice and the law. It is also necessary that we start accepting that judges can never be neutral in relation to their society. Neutrality, as here espoused, is risky, since it blinds judges to their own involvement in recreating and perpetuating stereotypes. Judges, we must insist, should bring their own and women’s experiences into their courtroom, in order to fill legal gaps. Concerning gender based violence we should be adamant that judges strive more for socially responsive attitudes (in order to bring the law in line with women’s needs), above their quest for neutrality. The lawyer in me needed to say that. Now, having said it, I need to add that I no longer have faith in the evolution of our criminal justice system.

In this light, how do we take what the Court has said and move forward as a nation of women who are being raped, daily, in our homes, in the streets, in courts and in the media? Well, we can’t take it forward I am afraid. I feel the need to tell women to, ‘stop, don’t come forward, please don’t!’ If you have a sexual history, if you have ever been abused. Stop, go to counseling, heal yourself, and don’t subject yourself to the court process. Don’t subject yourself to being a victim.

I am certain the overwhelming silence that is left hanging in the aftermath of this Zuma debacle resonates within all of us. We have been silenced. How does one get beyond the allegation that walking around in a kanga with no underwear on and sending SMS messages ending in ‘love, hugs and kisses’ are an invitation to sex? How do we get beyond that? I don’t know if I know how. How do I start taking responsibility for myself and stop being a victim? I am tired of being a victim. Do we need to be more radical and renounce all forms of flirtation? I am sexual? I love sex? I am one of those who flirt unashamedly with men, sometimes? Do I then loose my right to change my mind and say no? I have a sexual history? I have slept with men I hardly knew? I have picked men up in bars and taken them home? I have worn practically nothing on those occasions? I have sent provocative SMS’s? What does that make me? Someone who will never be able to place myself in a witness box. Right now I don’t feel the urge to speak out in a court of law. I can’t. Yet, I want to add my voice in the name of the movement for other women to speak out? No. I need to be consistent, so I feel tempted to say – let the deathly silence hanging over us hang as ominously as it now does, while we regroup and rethink and formulate new strategies on Speaking Out. I feel we can no longer continue putting women through horrendous processes that re-victimize them. Let’s be silent.

May this silence be akin to the quiet before the storm. And that when we break it, nothing but thunderbolts of new voices should leave our mouths.

* Nikki Naylor is human rights lawyer and social justice activist having worked in the Violence Against Women Project at the Women's Legal Centre in Cape Town, South Africa for the last 5 years. She has litigated violence against women cases at a Constitutional and Supreme Court of Appeal level in the country and has published widely in the area of rape, violence against women and sexual harassment.

* Please send comments to

On Monday I came back from a very long and tiring journey, to be greeted by a vexing headline at Cape Town International: ‘Zuma Rape Verdict Today’, it read. I sighed, because a part of me already knew what the verdict was going to be. I was certain a not guilty verdict would be returned. Not because I had any evidence that Zuma did not do ‘it’, but because of the way the trial had unfolded, from the search for a ‘qualified judge’, to the unbridled scrutiny of Ms K’s ‘sexual history’. But for me the official verdict was never going to be important. What was of importance to me throughout this trial was the workings of the South African justice system. The outcome of this case in my eyes, and many others, is clear - our justice system has been found guilty. It has been found guilty of being hostile to women, Black women in particular; it is guilty of its refusal to protect us.

From the outset, this system did not protect ‘K’. Instead, from day one, it allowed speculation over who she is. It allowed disgusting demonstrations, reminiscent of the days of witch-burning in Europe and North America in days gone by, by Zuma supporters to continue outside the court. It allowed for the unabated and invasive interrogation of her ‘sexual history,’ as it slowly stripped her of her dignity. What’s more, Judge Van Der Merwe’s 174-page judgment did nothing to restore that dignity. In fact, it served only to further humiliate her.

But what can one expect from a system based on Roman-Dutch law, which by its very nature is not sympathetic to Black women. A system constructed within a framework of white supremacy, and male dominance. One in which the Black woman is at the bottom of the human hierarchy. A system that is blind to the inequalities in our society. One that claims to treat everyone as ‘equal before the law’, all the while denying us our realities, and by extension our humanity. One that reifies colonial constructions of Black women as sexual objects, and overly sexualized beings. One that sprang from the same mindset that prompted Cuvier to dissect Sara Bartmann and place her brutalized genitals and brain on display. This, it must show, is a system whose effects are not going to be wiped out overnight, simply because we have signed a new constitution, or because we had Madiba, or because we live in a new South Africa.

All of this angers me, but not half as much as the pretense that the judiciary is independent and that the law is somehow above politics. It angers me also that the judiciary has a propensity to turn a blind eye to the fact that both in making laws and in their administration, issues of culture, historical experience, political ideologies, values and group interests are very much at play, and that imbricated within these processes are power and authority.

Justice is also not blind, neither are those who administer it. They see, or more aptly do not see, things in particular ways, influenced by their socialization, prescribed as it is by race, class, gender, sexuality, and values. Van Der Merwe, a white male, sitting in judgment in a case, which essentially revolved around the credibility of a Black woman, clearly showed in his six and a half hour judgment that he, like the rest of us, has gaps in his understanding.

“… pressure on a court in a matter like the present is big enough…It is not acceptable that a court be bombarded with political, personal or group agendas and comments. As one contributor to a daily newspaper very correctly put the matter…‘The trial is more about sexual politics and gender relations than it is about rape.’ Wise words but what a pity it had to be said.” (p. 3)

What a pity indeed! It would seem that rape and gender relations, within a patriarchal society, following on the judges reasoning, bear no relation to each other: one is about power relations within a system of male dominance, while the other is about?

K’s sexual orientation, her ‘disappeared hymen ring’, and mental health were at the centre of his treatise. Am I the only one finding this offensive? Am I the only who thinks that there is something seriously wrong with a judiciary that can have a white man so strip a Black woman of her dignity, in a sanctified, socially sanctioned manner? Am I the only one who feels that we are in desperate need of a different justice system? One infused with dignity that comes with respecting people’s humanity, especially that of Black women. One that will ensure that both those who have been wronged or who felt that they have been wronged and those who have done wrong, or have been accused of having done wrong, can find peace and healing?

In the not guilty pronouncement, Zuma has had his dignity restored. K’s kanga will be returned, but the question still remains, who will restore K’s dignity to her?

* Vanessa Ludwig is an African womanist who believes in Justice for Africa, and in particular for African women.

* Please send comments to

My attempt to construct a response to the epic that has become the Zuma trial was interrupted by a phone call. One that I found extremely irritating yet useful in its insistence that I contextualise one of the things I consider problematic in the discourse on gender based violence. Part of my irritation stems from the fact that at the time of the call I was trying to write a difficult piece on the intersect between race, gender, class and why the division of the women’s movement between madams and maids makes it difficult for black women to enter this discourse without first making apologies for the other sector they represent – their ‘womanness’ or their blackness.

The caller wanted to voice his disappointment with a comment I made on a TV programme where I said “…that the Zuma judgment is a set back for women’s rights.” He charged that such a statement meant that women’s rights would have been realised had Zuma been found guilty. And that it suggested that every person accused of rape had to be found guilty, regardless of the evidence before the court.

I could not help but notice how unfortunate this deduction was. It helped that the caller was a lawyer, and I was able to remind him of the distinction between a verdict and a judgment. My caller’s disappointment stemmed also from my perceived failure to endorse or reject the verdict. Why was it my duty to refocus attention on the law, in the three minutes I had? Why did my dissatisfaction with the judgment have to necessarily draw an adverse inference for potential rapists? This distraction is quintessential of the sidetracking that forces black women to engage on fringe issues, whilst attempts are made to silence our voices. I mentioned the treatment meted to K in support of my dissatisfaction. I told him that I did not understand why I needed a password to enter a discussion on gender-based violence, as protection from having to respond to things that I did not say, because not saying them meant I was saying something about Zuma.

The password is often a demand for qualifiers that have become a pre-requisite for debate on gender-based violence. So one needs to say ‘not all men are rapists, and that in the past some people have been falsely accused.’ Had I said that, I would have unlocked my audience. Fact - sexual violence disproportionately affects more women than men, but it does not follow that men do not count amongst survivors of sexual violence. Women lay rape charges, but it does not follow that all of these charges are true. There’s a distinction that I feel needs to be drawn, (one which we are all too eager to draw in other spheres of life), and that is that the norm in rape cases is that most of the complaints are not false, and the fact that some women lie is an exception. Therefore the eagerness to entrench an exception as a norm in rape cases - that women lie about rape - is at the heart of the demand for the concession that this judgment is indeed the correct one.

I have difficulties with Judge Van der Merwe’s judgment, when he finds that an extract from a draft autobiography, regarding K’s ‘experience with a penis’ when she was five, is relevant in determining her sexual history. In this instance there was no accused person, nor a charge of rape. This ‘experience with a penis’, which exists in the autobiography, is made relevant because in it she called it a rape. Acceptance of that evidence, that relates to how a person chooses to name an invasion of her person by a penis at that age, in a private document, not prepared for court, is what I call a set back for women’s rights. Accepting evidence from a gang, who claim to have had consensual sex with a thirteen year old, as relevant in determining whether she had a history of making false rape accusations, constitutes a set back for women’s rights. Disputes about whether there was vaginal penetration or ‘a series of thrusts between the thighs’, an experience that a thirteen year old should rightfully call rape, constitutes a set back for women’s rights.

So, although I think the verdict of an acquittal is a correct one, in law at least, because the state failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, my immediate reaction to the judgment is a NO! and not a statement that extols Van der Merwe’s virtues and legal acumen in acquitting Zuma in a manner that is so inimical to K’s dignity in any civilised society - let alone in a country that lists human dignity, achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms as its foundational values.

* Sibongile Ndashe is a woman who works with the law but believes in justice

* Please send comments to

FEATURED: Peace at last? Julie Flint assesses the Darfur peace deal
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Questions and Answers on the Jacob Zuma rape trial
- Four South African women respond to the Jacob Zuma trial verdict
LETTERS: Readers voice their views on Charles Taylor and healing in South Africa
BLOGGING AFRICA: The Blogosphere hummed this week over the Jacob Zuma rape trial and arrest of activists in Egypt, writes Sokari Ekine
BOOKS AND ARTS: Shailja Patel writes about ‘Imagining Ourselves’ (IO), an online project featuring the stories of young women
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem visits the Pan-African Parliament
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR: News about the fifth Pan African Parliament
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Escalation of fighting in Mogadishu
HUMAN RIGHTS: Reports say torture in Zimbabwe on the rise
WOMEN AND GENDER: Save the Children report exposes sexual abuse by aid workers in Liberia
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: UN third term warning on Nigeria, Chad opposition reject polls
DEVELOPMENT: The rise and rise of NGOs
CORRUPTION: Catching the big fish?
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: Rebuilding African health systems
EDUCATION: AIDS hindering education goals
ENVIRONMENT: Kenya’s Maathai seeks laws on resource sharing
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Online discussion on media development
NEWS FROM THE DIASPORA: France remembers slavery victims
ADVOCACY AND CAMPAIGNS: Campaign to stop sexual harassment in Egypt
PLUS: Internet and Technology, e-Newsletters, Courses and Jobs.

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The UN’s humanitarian point-man, Jan Egeland, warned that a UN operation to assist quarter of a million people who fled to eastern Chad to escape fighting has only received a tiny fraction of the funds needed. Most of those in need of help ran from brutal terror campaigns in the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan. Others are displaced by fighting in Chad or are refugees from war over the border in Central African Republic.

The Pan African Parliament is meeting in its fifth ordinary session, and is starting to address the magnitude of its challenges. A long-time dream of African political parties, individuals and institutions, the continental parliament now meets in South Africa twice a year, and in previous sessions has been debating largely the questions of logistics and resources for its own viability. The parliament is advisory for the first five years, not legislative, and thus faces the challenge of being taken seriously in its deliberations and interventions. However, one of the first indications that this body intends to be pro-active was its recent fact-finding mission to the Darfur region of Sudan, which recommended a larger and stronger role for the African Union in finding and keeping peace there.

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UN head Kofi Annan has warned African leaders against tampering with constitutions to extend their rule. "We need to play by the rules," he told the Guardian newspaper in Nigeria where a third term row is dominating the country's politics.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) welcomes applications to its Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program for the 2007-2008 fellowship year. Established in 2001 to enable activists, scholars, and journalists from around the world to deepen their understanding of democracy and enhance their ability to promote democratic change, the fellowship program is based at NED's International Forum for Democratic Studies, in Washington, D.C.

Opposition parties that boycotted last week’s presidential election in Chad said that they will not recognise the victor regardless of who wins in the final tally. Polling went ahead across Chad on 3 May despite international and opposition pressure for a delay, after rebels threatened to repeat attacks on the capital N’djamena in a bid to disrupt voting.

Eighteen fully integrated army brigades whose mission will be to provide security during Congo's general elections later this year will be fully trained by 5 July, the spokesman of the army chief of staff, Jean-Willy Mutombo, has said. The Higher Defence Council, chaired by President Joseph Kabila, had given this insurance in a communiqué following a recent council meeting, Mutombo said on Monday (8 May) in the capital, Kinshasa.

Four months ago, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz was fuming at the African nation of Chad for diverting oil revenues from the Chad-Cameron pipeline slated for poverty alleviation and social spending to a budget allocation for arms purchases. But now the former number two at the US Defence Department has decided that Chad, which threatened to halt its oil exports if the World Bank continued its aggressive posture, was not so wayward after all.

At the creation of the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) which later translated into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995, many thought that Africa was in for the much awaited sustainable development and poverty reduction. Unfortunately, observers and analysts have expressed shock and disappointment over the state of Africa and her poor despite their toiling and excruciating pains to wriggle out of poverty using the instrumentality of trade.

The United Nations General Assembly today (9 May) elected 44 of the 47 members of the newly established Human Rights Council to replace the much criticized and now defunct Human Rights Commission, with a second round of voting expected later to decide the full quota of representatives from Eastern Europe. All regions – Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Europe and Other states – obtained or exceeded the required 96-vote majority needed to fill their allocated number of members.

President Robert Mugabe’s complex succession struggle took a dramatic twist this week with disclosures that he has given ministers orders to amend the constitution to move the presidential election to 2010 to secure a two-year extension to his hold on power. Reliable official sources said Mugabe last month gave Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, his point man on constitutional issues, and his Rural Housing counterpart Emmerson Mnangagwa, also Zanu PF’s legal affairs secretary, a fresh mandate to change the constitution to delay the 2008 presidential poll until 2010 to allow him to hang onto office for a further two years.

As we survey the terrain of political contestation it is very difficult to be sanguine about the options open to civic forces and opposition political parties. The spaces for peaceful democratic politics have been ruthlessly eliminated, and the state appears set to discourage any prospects for national political dialogue. Under these conditions the democratic forces will feel an increasing sense of frustration and strategic blockage, tempted to lock themselves into ritual calls for redundant strategies with little organisational capacity to deliver on such claims. This is according to a publication, ‘Reflections on democratic politics in Zimbabwe’ published by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.

“The Other Side of the Coin” looks at the responsibility of the UK to combat corruption and money laundering. It examines what the UK can do to support African countries in fighting corruption, but does not excuse corrupt rulers from their ultimate culpability.