Abstract
South African President Jacob Zuma doesn’t like the way artists depict him – and with an election in a few months’ time, artists and the ANC are at loggersheads.
At the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s offices during the apartheid era, censors had a special way of dealing with music the government didn’t want heard. They hammered nails into LPs in an attempt to ensure that no DJ would be able to slip a banned or controversial disc on to the turntable and introduce listeners to dangerous ideas.
Music, art and films were routinely banned, with movies carefully watched by a board of censors determined to excise smut, blasphemy and inappropriate ideas about racial equality.
In 1962, the artist Ronald Harrison painted the banned African National Congress (ANC) leader Albert Luthuli as Jesus Christ. The painting, Black Christ, showed Luthuli crucified by Hendrik Verwoerd, prime minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966 and the “architect of apartheid” in popular history. Verwoerd and John Vorster, minister of justice and Verwoerd’s successor as prime minister from 1966, were depicted by Harrison as Roman soldiers. The painting offended Verwoerd’s ultra-conservative government on three fronts. Not only was the ANC a banned organisation and Luthuli a banned person whose name and face had no place in the public domain, but this was a direct challenge to the then-entrenched system of apartheid and “separate development”. Worst of all, Harrison was seen as blaspheming for daring to portray Christ as a black man.
Harrison was arrested and the painting was banned. It was smuggled out of the country and into the United Kingdom – probably the only reason it wasn’t destroyed. The painting remained in the UK until 1997: it now hangs in the South African National Gallery. Harrison died on 28 June 2011.
But these are old stories – they hark back to a time and a political system that is long gone.
Or do they?
In the past three years, South African art has been at the centre of a heated public debate around censorship, dignity and what’s “appropriate” when it comes to depicting President Zuma.
Zuma does not enjoy a comfortable relationship with art or satire. In 2010, a year into his presidency, it was revealed that he was suing the Avusa Media group, the cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro – known by his pen name, Zapiro – and the former editor-in-chief of the country’s biggest weekly newspaper, the Sunday Times, Mondli Makhanya, for a total of 5 million rands (about $501,086 million at the current exchange rate). Shapiro had drawn a cartoon depicting Zuma unbuckling his trousers while his political allies held down a blindfolded and obviously traumatised Lady Justice. The cartoon, published in September 2008, was a reference to Zuma’s acquittal on a rape charge in 2006. The cartoon was lambasted by the ANC as racist. In 2012, Zuma dropped the lawsuit.
Above: Artist Ayanda Mabulu with his painting Umshini Wam, a depiction of Zuma, Cape Town, 28 August 2012
Credit: Gallo Images/Getty Images
But it’s not just cartooning that gets the president’s back up. His governing party is not a fan of more traditional portraiture either.
In May 2012 Charl Blignaut, an arts journalist working for the weekly newspaper City Press in Johannesburg, visited the Goodman Gallery, where an exhibition by the artist Brett Murray was being set up. Called Hail to the Thief, Murray’s exhibition pulled no punches on the ANC – and one of the pieces, The Spear, depicted Zuma in the style of Victor Ivanov’s poster, Lenin Lived, Lenin is Alive, Lenin Will Live. The president stood tall and proud, looking at a distant horizon – and was pictured with his genitals exposed. Blignaut wrote a review of the exhibition, and a fierce debate was held in the City Press newsroom about whether or not to publish the offending image. Eventually, it was featured – uncensored – in the paper’s arts section. Four days later, a journalist from another newspaper contacted the ANC for its comment – and a storm erupted.
The ANC called for a boycott of City Press – the first time since the advent of democracy that any political party had done so. Copies of the newspaper were burned during a protest march in Durban. A church group called for Murray to be stoned to death. Towards the end of May 2012 the modern version of the censorship board, the Film and Publications Board, announced that it had sent a team to assess the painting for classification. Before it announced a 16N (no under 16s, contains nudity) rating, the painting was defaced by two men who walked in the Goodman Gallery and defaced it with a large black painted “x”. The Goodman Gallery appealed against the classification and won.
This was just the start though. Another artist, Ayanda Mabulu, has produced two paintings that have caused a massive outcry among supporters of the governing party, and particularly those loyal to Zuma. His first, 2010’s Ngcono Ihlwempu Kunesibhanxo Sesityebi (translated from the original Zulu, that’s Better Poor Than a Rich Puppet). Zuma was depicted in traditional African garb – and his genitals were exposed. The painting was ignored when it was first exhibited, but the furore around The Spear sparked a new interest – and extreme hostility towards Mabulu.
Most recently, Mabulu’s Yakhal’inkomo – Black Man’s Cry – became the hottest talking point of the 2013 Johannesburg Art Fair when the organisers asked him not to display it. The painting, which shows Zuma holding a police dog on a leash and standing on a prostrate man’s head, was a comment on the Marikana massacre of 2012, in which 44 striking mineworkers were killed by police. Several artists, outraged by what they perceived as political interference and kowtowing to the government and sponsors, removed their work too. Eventually, Mabulu’s painting was returned to the walls at the fair.
As unhappiness with the ANC grows, and with national elections set for May 2014, it is likely that more artists, whether they’re painters, cartoonists, sculptors, singers or writers, will register their displeasure
Lesley Perkes, who runs the public arts activist “disorganisation” artatwork, considered the possible consequences of political clampdowns on art in a piece published on the City Press opinion pages in October 2013:
“Arts, humanities and social services budgets are being decimated everywhere to make way for the far more important business of war and power.
“What better time for artists to make challenging work and for us to actively resist all attempts at censorship? If fear keeps us passive, we may as well move to North Korea. Worse, we may not need to move at all.
“Although the art fair denies being put under pressure from their partners, there is little doubt they made the decision because the pressure exists. It is invisible, often, and it is easy to deny. But it is pervasive…
“We do not need to resign ourselves to living in a world in which the bottom line is the only one, and badly drawn at that. We are alive.”
It is clear that there is a war brewing between the ANC and artists – particularly worrying in light of the country’s history of sometimes violent censorship. As unhappiness with the ANC grows – and with national elections set for May 2014 – it is likely that more artists, whether they’re painters, cartoonists, sculptors, singers or writers, will register their displeasure. And there’s a real risk that the government will use not just its political muscle but its monetary might – hitting artists where it hurts, through funding cuts.