BULAWAYO – A pregnant pupil who accused a Member of Parliament for raping her is recanting, claiming she had consensual sex with the lawmaker who ended the affair after learning that she was a schoolgirl.
Magwegwe MP Anele Ndebele (MDC) was arrested last week after the Sixth Form pupil walked into Nkulumane Police Station and reported that the MP had raped her twice after meeting her in Kezi.
Ndebele’s supporters had rejected the charges, instead alleging that the 19-year-old had been put under pressure by partisan state security agents to bring down the MP and cause embarrassment for his MDC party.
“I wish to withdraw a fake report I filed against Anele Ndebele on Monday, October 14. I claimed that he raped me when in actual fact I had an affair with Anele sometime during the festive season and I had consensual sex with him. The affair ended in February this year, after Anele discovered that I was still at school,” she wrote in an affidavit submitted to Kezi police, who took over the investigation.
“I framed him thinking that my parents would call him and discuss the whole matter since Anele worked with my father sometime back.
“Unfortunately, my father was terribly infuriated with the lie to the point that I ended up agreeing to file a police report on rape.”
But the teenager says she changed her mind almost within hours after realising the full gravity of the matter when her story was published newspapers and Ndebele was detained as an alleged rapist.
“On Tuesday, October 15, I told my parents the truth, as I was feeling guilty about the lie,” she said.
The teenager did not disclose the person responsible for her pregnancy, only indicating that they “I last communicated with the person responsible for my pregnancy in June.”
Ndebele was accused of raping the teenager on two occasions, once after giving her a lift to school and a second time at his homestead near Kezi Business Centre.
