DA MP acquitted on rape charge

Democratic Alliance MP Masizole Mnqasela was acquitted on a rape charge in the Wynberg Regional Court on Friday.

Magistrate Kay Pillay agreed with the defence team that there were too many inconsistencies in the State's case to justify a verdict of guilty.

His hearing stemmed from a sexual relationship he had had with the complainant, whom he had invited with a friend to his parliamentary home in Pelican Park, for a braai.

Mnqasela told the court the girl had informed him on the night in question that she had a painful vaginal discharge.

He himself had been in pain from recent surgery.

For these reasons, although she had slept alongside him on the same bed that night, they did not have sex, he said.

Pillay said Mnqasela, as a politician, was in the public domain, and was not supposed to be partying at night with teenage girls.

She said it was not within her domain as a magistrate to dictate to him how or with whom to spend his free time.

"If you want to ruin your reputation, you must just carry on the way that you have been."

Pillay said the alleged victim had been in matric at the time of the incident, and Mnqasela had allowed her to consume liquor at his home, during examination time.