Jonathan Shapiro, more commonly known as Zapiro, is really under the pump following his depiction of NPA head Shaun Abrahams in his latest cartoon.

This follows the NPA’s decision to appeal the Spy Tapes ruling, which many are saying is simply to delay Jacob Zuma facing over 780 corruption charges for as long as possible.

First up, the cartoon causing the trouble:

Now as you can imagine this one has really struck a chord – seeing JZ with a shower on his head is nothing new (even in school test papers), but depicting Abrahams as a monkey is opening yourself up to the harshest of criticisms.

Zapiro has now penned an article on TimesLive defending his cartoon – some snippets below:

It’s not as if I’m not aware of the risks associated with any monkey-like depiction in our racially charged political climate. It’s just that I expect readers to read cartoons with a degree of discernment and I think those who do so would see that this cartoon stands up to scrutiny…

President Jacob Zuma, who is actually the main target, is depicted in all his naturalistic humanity whereas Shaun Abrahams is depicted as the organ-grinder’s monkey for the purposes of the metaphor.

It is hard to understand how someone looking at the two figures together could come to the conclusion that I, as the cartoonist, have lapsed into generalised racist labelling…

I was disappointed that a tweet was sent out with only a detail of the cartoon – just the monkey-like figure of Abrahams – without the context of the full cartoon. That was never meant to happen. As I have explained, a depiction like this can only be done in context and it appears that this posting added unnecessary fuel to the fire.

I am also disappointed with Eusebius McKaiser’s criticism which appears to me to be a knee-jerk reaction like some of the others on social media.

Let’s take a breather quick and look at Eusebius McKaiser’s criticism in his Facebook post:

And Zapiro’s retort:

He says the cartoon carries no moral, aesthetic, political or legal insight. We all know that McKaiser was a star debater at Oxford. I’ll debate him on this one. Name the time and place.

As a cartoonist during apartheid and today’s democratic era, I have always pushed the boundaries. When debating a potential cartoon before publication, the questions I ask my editors are “does it work?” and “can we justify it?”

The toxicity of our current political climate makes it more difficult to be hard-hitting without self-censoring. While racism is something I have always fought against, some recent reactions to some of my cartoons appear to show that the situation is quickly reaching the point where self-censorship will be the order of the day.

The peeps over at The Daily Vox aren’t buying it, with a summary of their argument presented below:

…the association of black people with monkeys is traced to the start of the Europeans’ reign of plunder and terror in these parts. And it has consistently been used to denigrate black people as being less worthy of dignity than their white counterparts…

The point of depicting black people as monkeys relies on the idea of black people being inherently inferior to white people. And there’s nothing funny about that. Especially in a country where until 20-odd years ago, everyone with a skin tone darker than white, was systematically oppressed, and now continues to suffer through the legacies of that system. Depicting a black person as a monkey, and then expecting people to accept it as political commentary is some higher grade Penny Sparrowism…

the reference to black people as monkeys in this manner does not happen in a vacuum. Just a few days ago, in the US, a professional basketball player described his opponents as “quick little monkeys”…

[Zapiro] has drawn white people as monkeys previously, [but] it doesn’t suddenly make everything okay. The ugly, racist history behind the usage of the term means that it’s totally off limits for him. Simple as that.

One thing is for sure, Zapiro knows how to get people talking.

[sources:timeslive&dailyvox]

[imagesource:here]