<rant mode>
I don't know whether any one outside of South Africa has even been aware of the Jacob Zuma (ex-deputy president of the country) rape trial, but even for SA it reached some farcical levels. For instance, as a criminal trial it was announced that JZ couldn't be found guilty if he actually believed that the accuser had been asking for sex ? she had been walking around the house in her bedclothes, which he took as a SIGN. This alone has opened up a potential defence in a country which has the highest rape statistics in the world.
The defence also brought out a whole load of people to cut the accuser to pieces, including a couple of men she had accused of raping her back when she had been a teenager. A relative stole her private journal and it somehow ended up in the defence's hands and was given as evidence, and then to cap it all JZ claimed he wouldn't catch HIV/Aids (she was positive, a fact which he had known) because he was healthy and he took a shower after sex.
The character assassination was enough for the judge to find JZ not guilty. But I find it so unbelievable that half this stuff was accepted as evidence.
It has just been announced in the news that the ANC has welcomed him back as deputy president, and that his supporters consider him to be a good bet for the next president of SA.
Sometimes this place seems so third world...
</rant mode>