The woman who accused South Africa’s president of rape a decade ago, sparking a national debate about rape culture, has died aged 41, her family confirmed on Sunday.

Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, known to the South African public only as Khwezi to protect her identity, made headlines when she alleged that Jacob Zuma had raped her in 2005 while he was the ANC deputy president.

Kuzwayo, an Aids activist who was HIV-positive, was the daughter of an ANC member who had spent 10 years on Robben Island with Zuma, who had become a close family friend.

Zuma was acquitted on the rape charge in 2006, after claiming the sex had been consensual. In the aftermath, Kuzwayo and her mother were offered asylum in Holland after their home was burnt down and Kuzwayo received threats to “burn the bitch”.

Zuma, having been found not guilty of rape and corruption charges, became the president of South Africa in 2007.

“The news is absolutely devastating. It is a terrible tragedy. I spoke to her and her mother recently and she was just getting her life together again,” said former minister of intelligence services, Ronnie Kasrils, who knew Kuzwayo when she was a child in exile.

Kasrils and Zuma were often cared for by Kuzwayo’s parents when the two men were in the ANC underground movement during apartheid.

Kuzwayo was only 10 when her father, Judson Kuzwayo, an ANC stalwart who had spent 10 years as a Robben Island prisoner alongside his friend and comrade Zuma, died in 1985 in a car crash.

It was Kasrils whom Fezekile, also known as Fezeka, first called after the alleged rape by Zuma in the spare bedroom of his Johannesburg home on the night of Wednesday 2 November 2005.

“We should never forget her name. Fezeka Kuzwayo. Her life was completely smashed in 2005 and 2006. She was abused, hounded and castigated. It broke her. Her house was burnt down. But she was rebuilding her life again with a small group of friends who supported her and her ailing mother,” Kasrils said.

He added that she stood as a “a symbol for all of us who are abused in this violent, disgusting and patriarchal way. She is an example of what we must not do. We must show solidarity with those who are vilified for speaking out. I grieve her passing as I know we have been robbed of someone who could have made a fantastic contribution to society.”

The One in Nine Campaign against sexual violence, which was formed in 2006 in the aftermath of Zuma’s trial for alleged rape, issued a statement on Sunday that it was “devastated” by the news.

“Despite the characterisation in the mainstream corporate media and in court, Fezeka to us was a feminist, an activist, a teacher, a sister, a friend, a colleague who inspired people close to her and women who only knew her as Khwezi.”

In August a group of students staged a silent anti-rape protest inside the results centre in Pretoria as President Zuma rose to speak following regional elections.



Four women held up handwritten posters that read: “I am one in three”, “Ten Years Later”, “Khanga” and “Remember Khwezi” while Zuma continued to read his speech.

On a Twitter account only now associated with Kuzwayo now that her full name has been released, the activist described herself as a “free spirit”. Her biography read: “Daughter of freedom fighters and very independent.”



In one of her few tweets, sent on 26 May 2011, she wrote: “I may never be free from the agony of your treachery/but will forever cherish the freedom to speak that my father got murdered for.”

A version of this article first appeared on the Daily Maverick