Regular readers will remember the brouhaha over a painting of South African President Jacob Zuma with his genitals exposed. We discussed it during May, adding our amusement to that of many South Africans.
The latest development is a cartoon by South African artist Zapiro, depicting President Zuma as (entirely) a set of genitals, accompanied by a derogatory limerick. Since this is a family-friendly blog I can't reproduce it without risking offending someone, but if you want to see it, click here. (WARNING - not safe for work or children!)
Given the President's past, I think the cartoon's hilarious, but the South African government is entirely (and unsurprisingly) unamused by it, while Zapiro is unapologetic.
The government on Friday called for the urgent removal of the latest Zapiro cartoon, which features an erect penis with a showerhead and legs with an accompanying limerick about President Jacob Zuma. "Government calls on Jonathan Shapiro [Zapiro] to withdraw his cartoon, and urges the Mail & Guardian to remove it from its website," government spokesperson Jimmy Manyi said.
The cartoon was a "defamatory attack" on Zuma's character and violated his rights to dignity as enshrined in the Constitution.
. . .
Shapiro said he is sceptical about the social cohesion summit because it is an attempt to encourage conformity rather than real diversity.
"Dissident views are essential for real change. Irreverence toward leaders who take themselves too seriously is a vital part of democracy," he said in an email issued by his office.
He was responding to criticism of his cartoon, which was published in the Mail & Guardian on Friday.
"If ANC spokespeople feel the cartoon should be ignored then they are free to ignore it," he said.
There's more at the link.
Just goes to show: if you're a known polygynist, adulterer and serial womanizer, sooner or later it's going to come back to haunt you, especially if you're a politician!
Peter
2 SA questions for you, Peter.
ReplyDelete1.) Why are all the political cartoons you link to from SA in English? I mean, as an English speaker I appreciate it, but is English really that common in SA? Are these "re-letters" of comics that were originally written in Afrikaans? (Come to think of it, that rap video you posted a couple years back was in English too.)
2.) "violated his rights to dignity as enshrined in the Constitution."
Gak. Does SA really have such a thing in their Constitution? And as an afterthought, doesn't a "right to dignity" sort of require a bit of work on the part of the person in question to have some, first? ;)
@Perlhaqr:
ReplyDelete1. South Africa has eleven official languages; English, Afrikaans (a derivative of Dutch), and nine major tribal languages. (There are dozens more minor tribal dialects, too.) English is widely spoken, particularly among the white community.
2. SA Constitution has a right to 'human dignity'. See:
http://www.info.gov.za/documents/constitution/1996/96cons2.htm#10
It also has a right to privacy:
http://www.info.gov.za/documents/constitution/1996/96cons2.htm#14
However, it also has a right to 'freedom of expression', which would seem to me to protect the cartoonist in this case:
http://www.info.gov.za/documents/constitution/1996/96cons2.htm#16
Could the artist be silenced physically? We had a political couple who sort of eliminated the people they didn't like. Could that happen over there?
ReplyDeleteFrom my lay perspective, it's unlikely, especially for
ReplyDeleteShapiro, as he's a pretty big deal in political cartoons with a history that goes back to the apartheid era.