South Africa’s new leader Jacob Zuma is a bad example to the country’s youth due to his much publicised sex life, an opposition leader said on Friday.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille on Friday said sexism and misogyny were rife in South African society attributing that to Zuma.
Citing a recent study into the sexual behaviour of the youth by the University of Stellenbosch, she said some 27% of the youth surveyed thought “they could prevent HIV infection if they bathed after sex”.
“One wonders [silently] where they got that idea from. Asking that question aloud would attract another week-long misdirected uproar to divert us from the real issues,” Zille said in her weekly newsletter.
“This statistic is a sharp reminder of the powerful impact that the behaviour of leaders has on young people. It also explains why a leader’s personal conduct should be subject to scrutiny if it has public consequences.
“But in South Africa we prefer respecting taboos rather than facing facts.” she addded.
Earlier this month Zille outraged the ANC and its allies when she said Zuma was a self-confessed womaniser who by his own admission, in his rape trial in 2007, had sex with an HIV-positive woman without using a condom, thereby exposing his wives to the virus.
She made the remark after she came under fire from the ruling party for appointing only men to her executive team in the province.
Zille said the myths that washing or taking the contraceptive pill could prevent HIV infection were “convenient for the large number of South African men who believe that multiple, unprotected sexual encounters are their right.
Such men have no interest in challenging these myths.
