Outrage over Zuma role in Tyson function

Johannesburg: Women's groups expressed outrage yesterday at ANC leader Jacob Zuma's appearance at a charity fundraising banquet honouring former boxer Mike Tyson, in a country with one of the world's highest rape rates.

Tyson served a three-year sentence for the 1991 rape of an 18-year-old beauty queen, and Zuma was found not guilty of raping a family friend.

"It is in the face of this and the extraordinarily high level of violence committed against women in South Africa on a daily basis that this pairing of Zuma and Tyson is particularly distasteful and abhorrent," said a statement by the One in Nine Campaign, a women's rights group.