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Pretoria - Former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils will give the money from his defamation settlement to President Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser Khwezi and her family.
“The money being paid out is going into a trust fund for the woman you know as Khwezi, to help her with her education and to help her ailing mother, whose house was burnt down in the wake of the case,” Kasrils told reporters outside the High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday.
He hoped that the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) and its chairman Kebby Maphatsoe would extend a hand of friendship to the woman known only as Khwezi. Maphatsoe is also deputy defence minister.
They agreed that Kasrils would be paid R500 000.
Kasrils sued Maphatsoe for R1m for defamation, after he claimed that Kasrils had “handpicked the woman who alleged Zuma had raped her”. Kasrils was intelligence minister at the time.
Apology
Maphatsoe and the MKMVA apologised for the statement he made and apologised to the women of South Africa. Maphatsoe however did not make a public apology.
His lawyer Mfana Gwala said there was no need to do so.
“A court order is a public document, so there is no need for him to call a press conference and apologise. The court order is a public document for all to see,” said Gwala.
He said it was up to Maphatsoe to apologise to Kasrils in person.
When the rape charge was laid against Zuma in December 2005, Maphatsoe and other African National Congress officials maintained Zuma was the victim of a “honey trap” and that the woman was sent to seduce Zuma.
Zuma was acquitted in the High Court in Johannesburg in May 2006. He maintained afterwards that he was the victim of a plot.
In 2014, before the national elections, Kasrils and former deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge spearheaded a campaign called “Sidikiwe! Vukani Vote No!”, in which they urged South Africans to vote for a minority party, or spoil their ballots.
Maphatsoe spoke out against the campaign and reportedly said the plot against Zuma had come from the intelligence ministry. He claimed Kasrils had “sold out to foreign agencies” and was hostile to MK operatives who had been dismissed from service.
