Zuma accuser urged to say sorry

The ANC leadership wants Jacob Zuma's rape accuser to come home from the Netherlands and apologise for making the accusation.

The woman, known publicly only as Khwezi, accused Zuma of raping her in 2005 and fled to the Netherlands on a five-year asylum visa a year after he was acquitted and she began to receive death threats.

The Sunday Times has established from various sources that Zuma's former wife, foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini- Zuma, contacted Khwezi's mother, who fled to the Netherlands with her daughter, in March to talk about bringing them home.

The South African embassy in the Netherlands also made contact with the two, asking them to meet the minister of transport, Jeff Radebe, while he was there in March. Khwezi declined.

The Sunday Times has established that she and her mother were to be offered safe passage and security at home. In return, she was to apologise publicly for accusing him of rape.

Sources said the ANC was keen to have Khwezi back in South Africa, where it could keep an eye on her, before next year's election puts Zuma in the Union Buildings.

Radebe's spokesman, Collin Msibi, said the minister had gone to the Netherlands, but not to meet her. "He has never met her and he does not know her," Msibi said.

Dlamini-Zuma's spokesman, Ronnie Mamoepa, said the minister "never spoke to those people".

During Zuma's rape trial, Khwezi told the court she had been raised partly in his home after her father died and she regarded him as a father figure.

A year ago, she told a Dutch newspaper that she wished Zuma were dead.

"I would like him to no longer exist, to be spared seeing his face popping up in the newspapers *1," she said.

With acknowledgements to Moipone Malefane and The Times.