I never believed Sonono Khoza. Not because I thought that she deliberately lied about having sexual relations with President Jacob Zuma or because the issue of sleeping with a married man, especially a president, is trivial.
I did not believe her because she seemed to be denying the obvious to the wrong people, at the wrong time and in the wrong place.
I did not believe her “no-no” assertions because I knew that she knew that the issue of her having a baby with Zuma would be used as a club to bludgeon the president on the issue of unprotected sex, Aids, infidelity and a bad moral example.
As a woman, she would have recalled how he was grilled in court over allegations of having slept with Kwezi, a friend’s daughter.
Also, she would have been aware of how the global media mercilessly dealt with golf supremo Tiger Woods, for example, when it was established that he was having a series of sexual liaisons with women outside his marriage.
And public opinion has shown since the so-called scandal broke that the president has been in the sexual hot seat.
The majority of self-righteous people did not want not to believe that he had, once again, had sexual relations with a woman young enough to be his daughter.
So when she defended the indefensible by asking, “What baby are you talking about?” it was, for me, a no-no to believe her.
There were many people, especially women and white people who did not believe.
The way some callers reacted on talk shows on 702, Metro FM or SAfm, for example, told me why they did not believe her.
Here was yet more evidence that Zuma was not fit for the high office. They were livid that she would try to protect him.
But it was something else that she said that made them livid.
Khoza insisted on her innocence and asserted that “I have done nothing wrong. I’m a grown woman … I have the freedom to live my life”.
There were many people who were angry with her. In fact, they heard but refused to listen to what she was saying.
But she is not a naïve, sweet, 16-year-old. She is almost 40, this woman. However, people were mad at Khoza because she threatened to take away the moral hammer that could be used to nail Zuma, once and for all, on sex abuse of a friend’s daughter.
They would not tolerate for a second any notion of an independent, free, self-determining African woman who had a mind of her own to choose who to sleep with. They did not agree with the personal choice of a woman.
They did not really give a damn if Khoza had any feelings for Zuma or not. They were mad at Khoza because they believed that no man with three wives, already, should even think of getting yet another one so soon.
They were mad because she was allowing herself to be used by a man and thus debasing the image of women according to feminist ideology.
They were mad at her because no man, especially a president, should practise polygamy in the 21st century and still be considered civilised.
Their anger tells why so many men — like Tiger Woods or Bill Clinton, for instance — sniff hypocrisy in the issue of monogamy and infidelity.
The issue of monogamy and faithlessness in marriage is one that some men and women in a so-called Christian country deftly dance around.
A friend’s daughter!
When Khoza talked about her private life and demanded that people, especially the media, let her be, one did not need to be a feminist to know that she was in deep trouble.
Sex and Zuma instantly rattle ugly tremors in the hidden recesses of the collective psyche of many people, especially politically correct blacks and uppity whites.
Despite the fact that Khoza is a feisty woman, she found herself cornered and was not thinking straight.
For an instant, she saw all the joy, personal fulfilment, freedom of choice and self-determination to have a third child late in life flushed down.
She could not let the morally erect feminists, cultural critics, Christians, the politically correct and culturally superior whites have an open field to point their guns at Zuma.
She could shout all the drivel about her right to live her life the way she wanted, be the woman she wanted to be and have consenting adult relations with any man she desires.
But nobody would be interested to protect her rights and her choice. Nobody was listening. No African woman owns her own life. Oh, no, no, she can neither think for herself or make up her own mind. It is so no-no for Khoza to assume responsibility, like Zuma, to be the sole agent in her own life. And that is the lot of the African woman in a 21st century over-Christianised, patriarchal, supremacist and “civilised” country.
Perhaps Khoza did not even have to think about her response to this media trial. She instinctively knew and understood that the big story was a “hi-tech lynching of an over-sexed black president”.
If she stood her ground and declared her unconditional love for this smooth operator — and many women secretly think so — including those who pretend to be feminists, Zuma would not be hanged high at noon.
She knew that they wanted him out of the office for whatever reason. She, of course, did not want to be the cause of that.
You see, Khoza is an intuitive, sophisticated and modern African woman with a mind of her own but nobody really wants to listen to her-story.
The more sensational story that would make international headlines is that Zuma preyed upon his friend’s daughter.
But they were, again, wrong.
If Zuma was not the president of the most economically powerful country in the African continent, they would not worry.
Nobody would have been bothered with who he sleeps with. In fact, her-story would have been shebeen or hair salon gossip quietly buried in the hush-hush of indifference to what happens to an African woman.
There is no respect for individual privacy or right to self-expression.
If Khoza’s voice was censored or completely disregarded, it was not simply because she did not know what she was getting herself into.
The thing is, she is an African woman who will not be allowed to think for herself and represent herself in any way that is true to herself.
The old colonial, apartheid and patriarchal mentality applies to her. She will not be seen. She will not be heard. And she will not speak.
But Khoza should not worry now. Zuma, her shining knight has come to her rescue. He has accepted full responsibility.
Tell me, how many men do you know who will stand up to introduce and assert African culture, whatever it is, to the world?
I never believed that Khoza was telling the truth when she denied that Zuma had fathered her child.
Now that we all know the truth, let us allow all our women, including Khoza, the right to exercise freedom of choice.
Freedom for the man without total freedom for the woman is freedom for none.
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