Maybe Malema was right about raped women

Remember when Julius said that a woman who stays for breakfast and asks for taxi fare obviously enjoyed herself? Basically implying that the girl who accused Zuma of rape was a lying slut. Do you remember that? Do you remember how we all got angry with him? And said that in a country where women get raped all the time he shouldn’t be saying things like that. Do you remember how we accused him of abusing the rights of women, of being a misogynist pig?

The only reason I ask is because we all seem to have forgotten that we said that. We seem to be going back on our words. And as honourable people, as people who don’t condone duplicitous behaviour, I thought we needed to remind ourselves of that moment. Of that time when we didn’t like men who raped women. Of that time when we took the word of a woman over any claims of a political plot. Not because she was naturally right, and the man was naturally wrong, but because we wanted to be fair to her.

In Sweden there are two women who have a similar story. One who alleges she was coerced in sex without a condom and another who alleges she woke up to a man on top of her having non-consensual sex with her. Both of them are from the world of politics, just like the girl in the Zuma case. There are also allegations of a political set-up surrounding the case, just like in the Zuma case. But in the Zuma case we wanted the trial to go ahead. We wanted him pinned to the cross. We applauded Zapiro when he drew a cartoon of justice being raped. We all screamed for Mr Zuma to be taken down. We were all willing to back the girl.

But in the Swedish case we are refusing to even hear a word from these “dirty bitches”. We have accused them of being whores working for the CIA. We backed the hackers who attacked the website of their lawyer. We cheered as they shut down the website of the Swedish prosecutors’ office. We have said they didn’t complain in the morning about the rape, so they must be lying.

So maybe Julius was right. Maybe we need to apologise to him, and tell him, yes, we got it wrong. They are just women scorned. Lying, scheming harlots. And at worse it isn’t rape-rape, it’s just surprise sex, and who hasn’t surprised a woman with sex before?