SA ex-deputy president grilled in rape trial

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa's former deputy president Jacob Zuma testified for a second day in his rape trial on Tuesday as prosecutors grilled him on why he had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman.

"Why do you, a man who could still be president of this country, why were you prepared to take that risk?" asked state prosecutor Charin de Beer as she questioned Zuma in the Johannesburg High Court.

Once the frontrunner to succeed President Thabo Mbeki in 2009, Zuma has pleaded not guilty to a charge of raping the 31-year-old at his Johannesburg home on November 2, in a make-or-break trial that could destroy his political career.

"I had taken a decision to continue (with the sex)," Zuma told the court, after Monday's testifying in intimate detail how the woman seduced him and that he could not refuse having sexual intercourse with her.

"This night in question she insisted... She actually took the initiative... she encouraged me," Zuma told the court.

The 63-year-old veteran of the ruling African National Congress took to the stand on Monday after Judge Willem van der Merwe last week dismissed defense arguments that Zuma had had consensual sex with the AIDS activist and that the evidence furnished by the state was not solid.