Leave+private+life+out+of+this,+David+Masondo,+Sunday+Times

Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 13 May 2006
=Leave the man’s private life out of this — or show us yours=


 * //Acquittal on the rape charge puts Zuma’s sex life out of bounds, writes David Masondo//**



HISTORIAN Basil Davidson said that the writing of history is about facts and the selection of facts. Now that Jacob Zuma has been acquitted of the rape charges, commentators will be engaged in the decontextualisation and selection of facts to create a fiction to justify why Zuma should not be ANC president.

It is not my intention to determine whether Zuma should be the next ANC president or not. That is the ANC’s baby to nurse. My concern centres on the moral arguments used to justify why he should not be the next president.

Moral persons accept that no one has a right to harm or dehumanise others. Zuma has been found innocent, therefore his sexual act with his accuser was not immoral because there was consent, not force. This is not to say that power is always exercised through physical force. Powerful people in society exercise power without physical force. Many abused women are afraid to speak against their abusers because they economically depend on them.

It is regrettable that Zuma’s accuser has to leave the country. She must be applauded for exercising her right to complain, regardless of Zuma’s position in society. However, if it is true that she has been used by the anti-Zuma faction to tarnish his image, then the faction must be punished for undermining her humanity and dignity by using her as a mere tool to achieve their political ends.

Hurrah! Authoritarian moralism is dead. All is permitted — as long as our actions do not dehumanise or harm others — otherwise powerful individuals would impose their morals on our individual actions in our private lives. What is wrong and right would be determined by the anointed persons. For example, homosexual relationships would be criminalised by the presumed homogenous moral republic derived from science, religion, culture and tradition.

Thanks to the South African Constitution for not permitting harmful moral relativism. Otherwise we would have a society based on the survival of the powerful in which they would prey on the weak without being held accountable and punished. Everyone would do as they please regardless of the harmful and dehumanising consequences to others.

Private actions are morally right as long as they do not harm and dehumanise fellow citizens. It is this principle that sets the limits between the public or the state, and one’s private actions. It distinguishes between the public and the individual, private spheres.

Zuma, like any other adult, has the right to have sex with any consenting adult. To argue that he should not be president because he had sex with an HIV-positive consenting adult is morally wrong. This is not different from determining individuals’ sexual relationships. Who I choose to marry, whichever consenting adult I have sex with, is none of your business, as long as there is consent. Hands off! It is my sole, private sovereignty!

Those who use HIV value judgments against Zuma’s presidential candidacy should equally demand that their presidential candidates give us their sexual histories. The fact that their preferred presidential candidates’ linen has not been hanged in public does not mean that it does not exist.

Thanks to the working-class-led democratic and feminist struggles, a democratic state has the right to intervene in the family to deal with child and women abusers who justify gender-based violence within families in the name of private-sphere sovereignty or culture.

But no one, including the state, can determine whether consenting sexual partners sleep in the kitchen or the bathroom, or use a condom.

Yes, society must educate its citizens about the dangers of sleeping with an HIV-positive person without a condom. But society cannot criminalise those who fail to heed the call to use condoms.

The fact that Zuma is a leader does not follow that we are his copycats, because leaders are neither infallible nor superhuman beings. We have autonomous abilities to think and make choices. It does not follow that, if we are led by a homosexual president, everyone shall be homosexual. There is no authority determining our individual preferences.

People are entitled to elect a leader of their own choice, based on their own moral convictions. But their morality cannot be imposed on others. Please leave Zuma and his private affairs alone.

//Masondo is national chairman of the Young Communist League//


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/articles/article-specialreport.aspx?ID=ST6A185322**

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