Former MP of South Africa’s ruling party, ANC, and well-known gender activist Pregs Govender said the Jacob Zuma rape trial that rocked the country this month raised important questions about the role and responsibility of leaders worldwide.

Govender, who spoke at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, last week closely investigated the global context in which the trial against South Africa’s former deputy president Jacob Zuma took place.

Zuma, who has been acquitted of rape charges laid against him by a 31-year-old AIDS activist and family friend, repeatedly justified his behaviour based on “Zulu culture” during his trial. He also refused to take responsibility for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive person, believed his risk of contracting the virus was minimal and declared that the complainant’s dress indicated her wish for sexual intercourse.

In her speech, Govender said the court proceedings – the complainants sexual history became one of the main pieces of “evidence” – and Zuma’s conduct as a powerful and influential public figure were not isolated incidents but rather mirrored how (male) leaders worldwide used their influence and power to raise the levels of misogyny.

Zuma was a representative of today’s leadership in South Africa, and “if this is the paradigm that we apply to leadership in this country, we need to shift it,” demanded Govender.

She further explained that the way in which the complainant has been treated in and out of court was just one example of a global culture of misogyny, which grew due to increasing poverty, inequality, HIV/AIDS. Women continued to bear the brunt of human rights violations – in their homes, on the streets and in their workplaces. “Women’s bodies have become the battleground of poverty, HIV/AIDS and violence,” she said.

The rape trial was conducted inhumanely, without dignity, and the women’s rights violations that accompanied it caused despondency, despair and reinforced misogyny throughout South Africa, complained Govender.

Although governments around the world and international institutions like the World Bank repeatedly advocated gender equity and poverty eradication, their promises remained lip-service. Instead of wiping out poverty, leaders supported laws that forced “women and girls across the world [to] join the working poor,” Govender continued, noting that international decision-making led to the “feminisation of poverty”.

In South Africa, for example, the Sexual Offences Bill as well as bills to change customary law that regulates women’s access to land and treats them as legal minors, had not been enacted until today. “We need to start unpacking the inconsistencies [of national and international policy making],” she demanded, “[…] otherwise we are easily manipulated.”

Govender said poverty was one of the key factors that made women more vulnerable to violence and abuse and indicated that many governments continued to value profits and over the life and health of their citizens. In South Africa, for instance, the use of public transport, especially at night, was unsafe for women, yet budgets meant to improve the country’s transport system were “spent on building golf courses,” she claimed.

Govender also explained how the World Trade Organisation’s General Agreement on Trade and Tariff (GATT) created unemployment within the country (South Africa is a contracting party to GATT). Women turned vulnerable after losing union-supported, formal sector jobs and having to work in the informal sector, as street traders, for example.

As a result of this increasing “feminisation of poverty”, human trafficking became an increasing issue worldwide. More than 700,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year – its main victims are women and children.

* Kristin Palitza is the editor of Agenda, a journal on women’s rights and gender.