Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, 43, is accused of inciting terrorism and public violence via social media after her father was sent to prison in July 2021 for refusing to testify in corruption proceedings against him.
The explosion of rioting and looting that followed was the deadliest unrest in South Africa since the fall of the white-minority government in 1994.
A parliamentarian with her father’s MK party, Zuma-Sambudla faces three charges related to posts on Twitter, now known as X, including some that showed images of the unrest with the caption “We see you”, which the state alleges were inflammatory.
Zuma, president between 2009 and 2018, was at the court in the eastern city of Durban where his daughter pleaded not guilty at the start of a two-week trial.
Zuma-Sambudla and her supporters claim the case is politically motivated.
Durban, the main city in the KwaZulu-Natal province that is Zuma’s heartland, suffered the brunt of the deadly violence, which also spread to Johannesburg and caused damage estimated at billions of rands (dollars).
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took over from Zuma in 2018, deployed the military to control the violence, which he called an attempted insurrection.
Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in jail after refusing to testify to a panel probing financial corruption and cronyism under his presidency. He served only two months before being released for health reasons. Ramaphosa later commuted his sentence.
