Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro)
Social scientists and historians are increasingly convinced of the important role cartoons can play in enhancing our understanding of current and past political realities. With the South African provincial and national legislative elections on 22 April 2009 in mind, the African Studies Centre has assembled most of the work of the cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, who was born in Cape Town in 1958 and is better known by his artistic name, Zapiro.
Zapiro is “arguably Africa’s finest political cartoonist” according to a recent issue of the African Analyst Quarterly and has won many prizes, among them the Prins Claus Fund Award (2005) and the South African Best Humorist Cartoon Award (2008). Zapiro’s drawings appear regularly in Africa’s major dailies as well as in left-wing publications like Amandla! and in academic monographs.
The artist is often depicted as the sworn upholder of free speech and has a long track record of independent thinking and rebel actions. In the 1980s the cartoonist participated in the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front and, when serving in the South African Army, refused to carry arms. Not surprisingly, Zapiro’s cartoons reflect his “progressive, Left-liberal conception of what political life ought to be” (Koelble & Robins 2007: 315). His work is geared towards the enhancement of non-racial, community-oriented, gender-sensitive politics, values shared by a “small elite enclave of the educated middle class” (Robins 2008: 414) who probably make up the majority of his audience. Zapiro's work is not restricted to local politics but includes attacks on the policies of the Bush regime, Israeli operations on the West Bank, the Vatican’s views on the use of condoms and world leaders’ actions concerning environmental issues. Irrespective of one’s political point of view, one has to admit that Zapiro is undoubtedly one of those rare cartoonists who “se kop die nuanses van die stryd van die dag verstaan en wie se hand en pen tot sprekende interpretasies daarvan in staat is”, as the famous South African politician Japie Basson put it in his memoirs.
What makes Zapiro’s work particularly interesting at the moment is that the major target of his pen, Jacob Zuma, has been inaugurated as president of South Africa in May 2009. Zuma was implicated in corruption scandals, acquitted in 2008, and faced again eighteen charges of corruption, racketeering and money laundering according to a January 2009 verdict, when suddenly the national prosecution dropped charges a few weeks before elections. Zapiro’s commentary on Zuma’s first release was published in a cartoon in which Zuma was on the point of raping a woman representing the judicial system. Zuma responded by suing the cartoonist for defamation and if the new president really decides to let this case go to court, the scene will then be set for a battle of the giants.
Zapiro versus Zuma: on cartoons, kangas and the representation of culture
Although it is unclear to what extent political cartoons influence social reality and (voters’) behaviour, it is generally assumed that this form of graphic journalism provides a shortcut to a complex reality by alluding to realities already known to the audience (Conners 2005). Given the limits of the medium, these allusions can easily be misinterpreted and are directed at an educated elite because they presuppose familiarity with the cultural or literary source the cartoon refers to (Ibid.). According to Zapiro, a cartoon functions as a “warping mirror which provides a grotesque and altered reflection of events and personalities in order to make sharp and funny points” (Koelble & Robins (2007: 318). Zapiro sees his own role as that of a court jester, “which gives the cartoonist latitude to use hyperbole and to be rude if necessary” (Ibid.). The question here is whether this grotesque and altered version of events is helpful in our understanding of the social reality or whether it confuses the complex issues at hand. For this reason, I consider here various cartoons dealing with the rape trial, which took place between December 2005 and May 2006 and played a major role in Zapiro’s daily production during that period.
Rape trial
The two versions of what happened on the night of 2 November 2005 differ widely (see State v Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma). According to the female claimant Khwezi (pseudonym), a then 31-year-old HIV-positive AIDS activist, she had had a close relationship with Zuma since her father’s death some 20 years earlier. He, like Zuma, was an ANC veteran and fellow prisoner on Robben Island. Zuma was a father figure to her and Khwezi trusted him as a family friend. To explain how she saw her relationship with Zuma, throughout the trial she used the Zulu kinship term malume (mother’s brother, literally ‘male mother’) for the defendant (State v Zuma, pp. 8, 19,38, 41, 70, 73 ; see Zuma’s explanation of the term on p. 97, and the Judge’s acceptance of this on p. 152).
Due to his position in the ANC and his function as President of the National AIDS Council, she had worked closely with Zuma. When he moved to Johannesburg she sometimes slept at his house if his daughter was there too. On 2 November, she dropped by without planning to sleep there but was persuaded to stay the night at Zuma’s house later that evening. When she went to bed Zuma came into her bedroom and raped her (http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2668/Buitenland/article/detail/860627/2007/07/03/lsquo-En-plots-stond-Zuma-naakt-voor-me-rsquo.dhtml).
In Zuma’s description of what happened, Zulu culture and the “performance of Zuluness” played a major role (Cf. the illuminating article by Mkhwanazi). Zuma testified in defence of his behaviour that the claimant wanted to have sexual intercourse with him because she was wearing a knee-length skirt and later that evening only a kanga (a rectangular cotton piece of cloth that is used as a wrap), and Zuma went to her bedroom because she had indicated she wanted to tell him something. At that time she was only wearing a kanga and that was the reason why he changed into pyjamas, he declared. He started to massage her with baby oil, interpreted her body language as meaning that she was sexually aroused and finally had sex with her because in his (Zulu) culture “he couldn’t leave a woman in a state like that”. He did not bother to use a condom, in spite of her HIV status, but afterwards he had a shower “to reduce the risk of infection”. The white, male judge Willem van der Merwe accepted the defence’s cultural arguments as well as confidential evidence of the claimant’s sexual history derived from an unpublished diary. He generally believed Zuma’s portrayal of Khwezi as an unstable, unreliable woman with a history of unproven rape accusations, and seems not to have investigated any of the cultural constructs of Zulu (wo)manhood. On 8 May 2006, the day of Zuma’s acquittal (which for many women’s rights advocacy groups was an extremely disappointing verdict) he performed another embarrassing act of Zuluness by chanting the highly contested (see Gunner 2009) and violent song Awuleth (u)mshini wami (Bring me my machine gun).
Culture versus modernity
What was Zapiro’s view of this trial? His cartoons are generally accessible to an English-speaking, middle-class, literate audience. They contain references to world literature (Cartoon 2), Zulu expressions are translated into English (Cartoon 3), popular abbreviations like MCP (Male Chauvinistic Pig, Cartoon 7) are assumed as common knowledge and the cartoons rely heavily on textual explanations (for example, Cartoon 4). The drawings present Zuma as an irresponsible, morally degenerate, aggressive rapist. In particular, his careless attitude towards the spread of AIDS, by admitting he took a shower to minimize the risk of infection, is emphasized. (Since the trial until Zuma’s inauguration as president in May 2009 Zapiro has never drawn him without a shower head). What is interesting is that this behaviour is attributed to Zulu/Zuma culture, very much in line with the defendant’s arguments but exaggerated for the purpose of artistic clarity. Zapiro merges these references to Zulu cultural elements, like clothes (the leopard skin in Cartoon 7) and language (the Zulu song in Cartoon 3), with the perceived patriarchal, misogynistic and generally backward ideas like showering to minimize the risk of AIDS and claiming that women ask to be raped by dressing inappropriately.
Zapiro’s cartoons offer a shortcut to the complex events of the trial by applying a culture versus modernity dichotomy. The artist makes one point very clear: some culturally embedded ideas are obstacles to modern, progressive values (human/women’s rights) and lead to serious social evils. (For instance South Africa has the highest number of reported incidences of rape in the world.) However, the ‘bad’ culture versus ‘good’ modernity approach does not leave any room for positive views of Khwezi’s culture (Zulu father, Xhosa mother), since her identity is already charged with ‘modernity’, a shorthand for western values. This will become clear by considering one of the elements that received a lot of media attention during the trial: the kanga.
The kanga in the public domain
When Zuma testified that Khwezi’s kanga indicated she wanted to have sex with him, the response was greater than would have been expected. The kanga was exhibited and demonstrated in court and referred to as “Exhibit 1” in the verdict. Women’s advocacy groups immediately began to demonstrate outside the court, dressed in kangas. Jokes of all kinds appeared in the press (“What is the cheapest way out of Jo’burg? Visit Zuma in a Kanga!”). The new word (at least for the literate, mainly white audience of Zapiro's cartoons), was picked up by South African authors: “Oops, did we just use the new K-word?” Stephen Simm writes in one of his books.
Motsei’s work, in which she sketches the trial against a background of violence against women in South Africa and beyond, is entitled The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court. (The title is somewhat misleading because the book is more about the cultural constructs of men’s superiority over women and patriarchal gender stereotypes in popular culture rather than about this rape trial as such.)
Zapiro of course knows very well how society immediately saw the ‘new’ garment and its connotations. The evidence is the front cover of the Zuma Code (Cartoon 1) where the word ‘kanga’ is mentioned alongside other elements of the Zuma trials like hoax emails, a machine gun, the song mshini wami, sperm and the shower. Also in two other cartoons (24 September 2006 and 26 February 2008) Zuma is associated with ‘a hottie in a kanga’ and ‘a new wife (no.4) in a kanga’. However apart from these references, the total absence of the word ‘kanga’ in the representations of Khwezi and its replacement by ‘short skirt’ in all the other cartoons (nos. 4, 5, 6 and 7) is remarkable. This might be the same (subconsciously influenced?) cultural translation as the spelling mistakes by Van der Merwe who, on five occasions in his verdict, writes about a ‘tanga’ instead of a kanga!
The kanga as an identity marker
The kanga originated in Eastern Africa in the late nineteenth century and rapidly became part of many other African cultures. The colourful cloth has many practical purposes: to carry babies, to decorate walls and tables, and to sleep under. It also functions in lifecycle rituals (births, marriages and deaths) and it is the most common and affordable female dress in (East) Africa: every woman has at least a couple of kangas and poor women often do not have anything else to wear in the public domain. I once saw a board on a club's premises in Tanzania stating that slippers and kangas were prohibited, which effectively excluded all male and female hawkers.
In East Africa a saying or proverb in Swahili is often printed on the edge of the cloth. What most African women and men immediately understood was the absurdity of Zuma’s claim that a kanga carries (only) a sexual message. Although sexual messages are part of its rich repertoire, the kanga is more usually associated with tradition, authenticity and (ethnic) identity. Journalist Nicole Johnston slightly exaggerated this aspect in the Mail & Guardian (5 May 20006) by stating that “the humble kanga has been the hallmark of female modesty and respectability”. The enormous potential of the cloth to express different cultural and social identities is attested to in many studies in East Africa and beyond (Cf. Abdela 2008, Beck 2000, 2005, Hongoke 1993, McCurdy 2006, Zawawi 2005). For this reason, organizations like religious groups and political parties that deal with identities use kanga prints as a means of creating a common feeling of belonging among their female backers.
The kanga as a powerful way of expressing diverse (female) identities rather than conveying an unambiguous sexual message was illustrated by Khwezi herself. Because of the threat of violence from Zuma supporters who burned her picture and chanted “burn the bitch” during court sessions, she applied for and was granted asylum in the Netherlands. In September 2008 before the opening of the visual arts exhibition Identiteit, macht en verbinding, she recited her own poem entitled “I am khanga”, dressed, of course, in a kanga (Khwezi 2008).
In the first stanza of this poem, which probably refers to the Swahili poem “I am [like a] Kanga I die in all my beauty”, she mentions some of the diverse semantic layers of the cotton cloth:
I wrap myself around the curvaceous bodies of women all over Africa
I am the perfect nightdress on those hot African nights
The ideal attire for household chores
I secure babies happily on their mother’s backs
Am the perfect gift for new bride and new mother alike
Armed with proverbs, I am [a] vehicle for communication between women
I exist for the comfort and convenience of a woman
But no no no make no mistake…
I am not here to please a man
In contrast to the polysemic kanga, the short skirt Zapiro uses in his cartoons evokes notions of moral degeneration, westernization and modernization in most African discourses. In a South African incident in which a woman wearing a miniskirt was assaulted some older women invoked culture as an argument in defence of the male attackers “stating that miniskirts are against culture” (Mkhwanazi). In similar incidents in East Africa, ‘sexually provocative’ miniskirts are presented in contrast to the ‘decent’ kanga. What Zapiro does here is go beyond a mere cultural translation necessary to convey a complex issue: this seriously affects the message.
Zuma culture versus universal values
Both Zuma and Khwezi chose to mark their identity by referring to cultural idiom: Zuma claims a particular construction of Zulu manhood and Khwezi refers to the cultural expectation of being protected by a malume (mother’s brother). The claim that a kanga is a symbol of sexuality by Zuma and Khwezi’s re-appropriation of the kanga as an icon of African female identity are phrased in cultural terms. Zapiro succeeds in representing Zuma’s culture (although he makes fun of it) but in the process clouds the other side of the coin, namely Khwezi’s culture.
As Zapiro aims at ridiculing Zuma’s macho culture and customs, equating them with backwardness and being the source of violence against women, there is no room for an equally traditional, culturally embedded identity marker like the kanga. While Zuma ‘translated’ the kanga message as an invitation for sexual intercourse, according to his Zulu culture (seen as ‘Zuma’ culture by Zapiro), he played the role of embodying Zuluness (Koelble & Robins). Mkwanazi rightly states that: “If Zuma the 100% Zulu boy acted in accordance with cultural norms, then by accusing him of rape [Khwezi] was then not a 'real’ Zulu woman.” According to the verdict (p. 17), Zuma told her during the sexual intercourse she was a “real girl”.
The cartoons succeed admirably in depicting the trial as a ridiculous performance of Zuluness and showing cultural stereotypes of man and womanhood. However the question is whether Zapiro has been equally successful in transmitting one of the core messages of the trial: the ongoing debate between ‘culture’ and ‘modernity’ in South Africa’s rapidly changing society. In his cartoons, Zapiro consciously creates a dichotomy: on the one hand there is Zuma’s bizarre performance of being a “100% Zulu boy” [a text written on his followers’ T shirts], his references to obsolete customs and his use of the Zulu language in court. On the other hand, there is a female victim representing all ‘modern’ values like AIDS prevention, human rights, gender equality and respect for bodily integrity. As the defender of these laudable ‘modern’ causes Zapiro debunks the myth that women ask to be raped by the clothes they wear. To make this argument he turns Khwezi into a ‘modern’ and ‘western’ woman wearing miniskirts, thereby alienating most African (kanga-wearing) women in the process of fighting for their rights. To transmit this message of modern salvation successfully, Zapiro removes all Khwezi’s individual traits and identity and turns her into the embodiment of female victimhood: she becomes faceless, with no name or cultural identity. Zapiro implicitly denies her a claim to a cultural identity and, strange though it may seem, this is exactly what two other men – Jacob Zuma and Judge van der Merwe – did before him.
Sources
Abdela, Farouque,
2008. Mimi kama kanga, nafa na uzuri wangu. In: Arnold, Marion, Art in Eastern Africa, Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota, pp. 99-104.
Beck, Rose Marie
2000. Aestetics of Communication: texts on textiles (leso) from the East African Coast (Swahili). In: Research in African literatures, (31), 4, pp. 104-124.
2005. Texts on textiles: proverbiality as characteristic of equivocal communication at the East African coast (Swahili). In: Journal of African cultural studies (17), 2, pp. 131-160.
Conners, Joan L.
2005. Visual Representations of the 2004 Presidential Campaign. Political Cartoons and Popular Culture References. In: American Behavioral Scientist 49 (3), pp. 479-487.
Gunner,Liz
2009. Jacob Zuma, the social body and the unruly power of song. African Affairs 430, pp. 27-48)
Hongoke, Christine J.
1993. The effects of Khanga inscription as a communication vehicle in Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: Women’s Research and Documentation project.
Kavuli, Elizabeth & Jan Wittenberg
2000. The World of the Khanga, in NMK Horizons (4), 2, pp 19-21
Khwezi
2008. “I am Khanga”, Zam Africa Magazine (4), p. 31
Koelble, Thomas A. & Steven L. Robins
2007. Zapiro: the work of a political cartoonist in South Africa. Caricature, complexity, and comedy in a climate of contestation. PS Washington, 40 (2), pp. 315-318
McCurdy, Sheryl
2006. Fashioning sexuality: desire Manyema ethnicity, and the creation of the Kanga, ca. 1880-1900. In: the international journal of African historical studies, (39), 3, pp. 441-469.
Mkhwanazi, Nolwazi
Miniskirts and Kangas: the use of culture in constituting postcolonial sexuality. At: http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2008/05/02/miniskirts-and-kangas-the-use-of-culture-in-constituting-postcolonial-sexuality/ accessed 28 January 2009.
Motsei, Mmatshilo
2007. The Kanga and the Kangaroo court: reflections on the rape trial of Jacob Zuma. Jacana.
Robins, Steven
2008. Sexual Politics and the Zuma Rape Trial. In: Journal of Southern African Studies 34 (2), pp. 411-427
State v Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, High Court of South Africa, Witwatersrand Local Division, at: http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPHC/2006/45.pdf
Zawawi, Sharifa
2005. Kanga, the cloth that speaks. New York: Azania Hills Press
Posted on 11 May 2009, last modified on 19 May 2020