South Africa’s former Deputy President Zuma was acquitted of rape yesterday but repercussions from the case — which sparked debate on AIDS, rape, the judiciary and the country’s leaders — are likely to continue far beyond the courtroom.

Judge Willem van der Merwe, who under South Africa’s non-jury trial system, began what was expected to be a lengthy review of the evidence at 0700 GMT. The full verdict took several hours, capping a sensational trial that opened deep rifts in the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Van der Merwe observed in a preamble to his judgment that the trial had created unusual interest in the public at large and received enormous media coverage.

“This trial is more about sexual politics and gender relations than it is about rape,” he added before turning to his prepared judgment. Zuma supporters said they were ready for anything.

“If he was found guilty there will be war, we will turn this place upside down,” said Elliot Fangweni, a 29-year-old unemployed man from Soweto outside Johannesburg joining a crowd of pro-Zuma protesters outside the court.

Police with riot shields threw a heavy security cordon around the Johannesburg high court as Zuma supporters, some of them brandishing cardboard machine guns, declared their support for a man once seen as South Africa’s likely next president.

Inside the court dozens of Zuma supporters, many of them wearing traditional Zulu dress, clapped and sang church hymns and songs from the anti-apartheid struggle before van der Merwe began delivering his verdict.

The nearly two-month trial of the populist politician was marked by rowdy rival protests by his supporters and women’s rights groups, and thousands of Zuma supporters turned out on Sunday for a fund-raising rally to benefit his legal fund.

A group of Zuma supporters held an all-night vigil near the court, a demonstration of faith in a man most political analysts say has been severely damaged by the rape charges.

<B>Protesters chant</B>

Zuma, 64, was facing a separate trial on graft charges starting in July.

Yesterday several hundred protesters chanted and danced near the courthouse, while others sang Zuma’s trademark song “Bring me my machinegun” while others waved cardboard cutouts of AK-47 guns.

“He’s my president. He will not be found guilty because that girl, she is lying,” said Thami Kubheka, who arrived at the court at about 3 a.m. with a group of Zuma supporters from his home province of KwaZulu-Natal. Supporters said they expected the crowd to swell into the thousands by the time the judge began delivering his ruling.

Zuma was accused of raping a 31-year-old family friend at his Johannesburg home last November. He has conceded he had sex with his accuser, an HIV-positive AIDS activist, but said it was consensual.

A guilty verdict could have brought a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, while the acquittal breathed new life into his badly damaged political career. President Thabo Mbeki fired Zuma as deputy president last year after he was implicated in a corruption scandal, and he was later formally charged with graft.

Zuma’s dismissal raised tensions within the ANC, fanned by Zuma’s own charge that the corruption case was part of a political smear campaign designed to prevent him from succeeding Mbeki as president in 2009.

<B>Rebecca HARRISON</B>