I was wondering how long this was going to take. The ANC is currently in preperations for its court date at the Johannesburg High Court tomorrow, to get the painting of JZ and his junk taken down. After today’s NEC meeting, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe had some choice words for the media.

Brett Murray’s The Spear, which the ANC today branded as “racist.”

It’s rude, it’s crude, it’s disrespectful, it’s racist. I said how about the idea of going to court tomorrow and as we sit there we can take off our trousers… we can walk around with our genitals hanging out… it’s crude. We have not outgrown racism in our 18 years.

Mantashe is of the view that had the painting depicted a white person, the reaction would have been a lot different – and that many people regard black people as nothing more than objects. I’m really failing to see his logic here. Here is the original print that The Spear is based on:

The original image, featuring Lenin.

This is expression – a right contained in the Constitution, a document that I hope he’s familiar with. Offending someone is not a crime, rather it is a valuable tool to kickstart discussion. It should be embraced, especially in a transitional democracy such as ours.

Tomorrow’s court case is likely to result in not very much at all. Consitutional law expert Pierre De Vos has had the following to say on his blog:

As this is a work of art, there is no chance that any half decent judge would grant the orders requested by the ANC, first, because there is no law that prohibits an artist from making such a portrait and second, because if there were such a law it would be unconstitutional.

ANC, we’ve said it before, and we’re saying it again. Drop this. You’re making yourselves look foolish. You’ve taken a story that would have died in a 24 hour news cycle and made it into something that is dragging on much longer than it needs to. It is not racist. It is not a direct attack on the president, it is commentary on the state of the country.

It is art, please accept it for what it is.

[Source: News24; TimesLive; Constitutionally Speaking; image credit Daily Maverick]