The new Zuma painting: What have we learnt since ‘The Spear’?

by The Editor


FEATURE: The new ‘controversial’ painting of President Zuma, by Ayanda Mabulu, provides for us an interesting benchmark, against which we can measure what effect Brett Murray’s The Spear had on South Africa. Put another way: what did we learn from The Spear? Has our capacity for tolerance increased or decreased? And is our commitment to Freedom of Expression enhanced or denuded as a result of it? Time will provide the full answer to those questions. In the meantime, here are a few preliminary thoughts.

The new Zuma painting: What have we learnt since ‘The Spear’?

By: Gareth van Onselen


29 August 2012

The new ‘controversial’ painting of President Zuma, by Ayanda Mabulu, provides for us an interesting benchmark, against which we can measure what effect Brett Murray’s The Spear had on South Africa. Put another way: what did we learn from The Spear? Has our capacity for tolerance increased or decreased? And is our commitment to Freedom of Expression enhanced or denuded as a result of it?

Time will provide the full answer to those questions. In the meantime, here are a few preliminary thoughts.

The primary obstacle to making any such evaluation is public fatigue. Although interest in the new painting is significant enough for it to be a national story, it appears nonetheless more diluted, less intense. There are only so many crises a society can absorb over a given period and South Africa is fairly saturated at this point. So, from first principles, one must appreciate there is relatively less of an appetite for such things.

However, one could partly ascribe to that reaction greater tolerance. The world did not end with The Spear. The Rand didn’t fall. Jacob Zuma continued to muddle along. The City Press continued to sell newspapers. And the ANC continued to wage war on itself regardless of its united radicalism on the issue. Perhaps, then, some pragmatic tolerance was learnt and has contributed to the far less frenzied response Mabulu’s painting has received.

That said, a great many of the online and print media did carry the story. Significantly, most of them cut or manipulated the image on their websites to exclude the part of the painting representing Zuma’s penis. Eyewitness News, for example. Likewise Independent Online. Indeed, in one of its stories they actually blurred out Zuma’s penis – no doubt a response to the Film and Publications Board’s 16N rating given to The Spear). TimeLIVE refused to show the picture at all, despite a story explicitly about it.

iAfrica went from showing the full picture last night to replacing it with a blurred photograph this morning. This is the story where the picture changed.

So, intolerance and freedom of expression lose points there. Clearly these media houses are too fearful to show the full painting.

Others were less circumspect. The Mail & Guardian covered both bases, offering a limited version in its public stories, with a link for those desiring to see the full painting.

News24 put up an extensive video on the subject, along with an interview with its artist. So their resolve has clearly been strengthened. Remember, News24 took down their pictures of The Spear, in the same groveling fashion the City Press succumbed, so kudos to them. Well, so far at any rate.

The ANC has released a few typically nonsensical odds and ends in response to the picture, obviously expressing its deep disdain for it (it’s an “abuse of the arts,” apparently) but, significantly, no threats or intimidation this time round; at least, so far. I very much doubt that represents a greater appreciation for freedom of expression or tolerance, rather the realization that the political mobilization experiment that constituted the party’s response to The Spear failed; if only because no amount of cultural offence is ultimately going to unite a party so divided or detract the ANC from the fundamental internal meltdown it is trying so desperately to manage.

Then there is the City Press and its editor, Ferial Haffajee, who so meekly capitulated in the face of ANC pressure and removed The Spear from the newspaper website. Since then, Haffajee has said she regrets the choice and would not have done so had she known then what she knows now (an admission that her attitude to issues like this is entirely pragmatic – presumably she knows the same principles now she knew then). Guess what, no full painting on the City Press website, just a generic SAPA story about it (no picture) and another story with an photo cut to exclude anything controversial.

So, the best of both worlds for the City Press then – a chance to ensure the public that it has rediscovered its backbone, but it’s a backbone that will never be tested because the paper simply won’t display the picture. So intolerance and secrecy clearly had the determining influence on that newspaper and tolerance and free expression are the poorer for it.

A final point of consideration, which comes to me from a reader: the subject of the painting himself might have contributed to the relatively more muted response to it. Perhaps more people have done the maths and simply come to the conclusion Zuma is not worth getting too worked up about and that his behaviour, not some anti-revolutionary and racist plot, is, in fact, responsible for the painting. If that is indeed the case then, among other things, what we are seeing is what small amount of respect that remains for the President being eroded away as the Prince becomes, in the public mind, the Clown Prince.

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