Zapiro: No sign yet of drawing to conclusion

LANGUAGE, nudity, prejudice, sex and violence. No under-16s.

This is the restriction the Film and Publication Board has placed on the new documentary about Jonathan Shapiro. One result is that The Showerhead will be seen by an audience smaller than it could have been – Zapiro's cartoons are part of the curriculum in many high schools. 

They are analysed and discussed in depth so that young people can learn about the nuances in politics, about irony, ridicule, disruptive humour and the cardinal role of the court jester in the media. It's a mystery how the publication board concluded that Zapiro's caroons featuring Lady Justice and former president Jacob Zuma with a dripping showerhead are prejudiced.

Much has been written about why Zapiro used the Lady Justice rape metaphor. It caused a stir and was seen as insensitive. In the context of Zuma's patriarchal and chauvinistic behaviour and the case made against him after he had sex with Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo (who has since died), it makes sense as hyperbole. 

Are we dealing with a Film and Publication Board filled with dull apparatchiks and technocrats who don't understand visual hypallage, satire, parody and imagery?

“It reminds me of the old censorship board," says Zapiro. More on that later. For now, more about Jonathan Shapiro.

***

I remember as a young and avid reader of Die Suid Afrikaan, South, Sowetan, the Cape Argus and the Mail & Guardian (formerly the Weekly Mail) how I looked forward to his incisive cartoons. Also later in The Times, the Sunday Times, and from 2017 in the Daily Maverick.

Many of us have aged, grown, laughed and learned with Zapiro over the decades in which he has captured history and the present. His work also appeared three times a week in the Cape Times, The Star, The Mercury and the Pretoria News.

So far, 32 books with collections of his work have been published. “At one point in my life I got 35 newspapers a week. Now I get eight, so many have now moved online or no longer exist," he says.

“I used to put four newspapers with the same stories on a desk and looked at each one's different angles. It was fascinating. Currently I draw three cartoons a week but there was a stage when I did up to seven a week.

“Later I couldn't keep up anymore. My work only stopped on Saturday afternoons at 3pm, then I had to get up early again the next day and carry on."

He remembers one day when the phone rang in his studio. He was hard at work. Someone handed him the phone and said: “The president wants to talk to you."

“Yes, sure," he replied. He took the phone, put it to his ear and said: “Hello."

“I am very disappointed in you," said the voice. He was thinking that he recognised the voice, then the man on the other end said: “It's Nelson Mandela here."

Madiba then burst out laughing and said he was disappointed because he no longer saw Zapiro's cartoons in the Cape Argus. They had a good chat.

***

Zapiro is obviously a news junkie and his day starts early with his little old Sony radio. One day he was lying with his headphones on when he was visiting a friend in Durban, and it seemed as if he was sleeping with the radio on.

“He said I take my news intravenously. I worked with this radio even when the kids were little and I had to help make their lunches.” He listens to political talk radio on various stations, reads the few newspapers that are still alive, visits many websites. “Once in a while I talk to editors, then I start playing around," he says.

He doesn't begin with a quip or a sketch or whatever. “I have a notebook in which I write down words – new topics – and then ideas pop up. I write them down, link them together, start building mind maps. It's very, very conceptual."

It is widely accepted by international political cartoonists that Zapiro is one of the most highly regarded artists, among the crème de la crème. After studying architecture for four years at the University of Cape Town, in 1988 he went to the School of Visual Arts in New York with a Fulbright scholarship to study media art. He spent three years under the big guns and cartoon masters Art Spiegelman, Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman.

People in Zapiro's industry whom he admires include Steve Bell, the legendary British cartoonist who drew for The Guardian in London for decades. “He is one of the best in the world," says Zapiro. Bell is also a friend. 

Then there is Patrick Chappatte, a Lebanese-Swiss cartoonist known for his work in Der Spiegel, The New York Times and Newsweek.

He mentions that satire cannot make headway with social media, because there are so many echo chambers and such a fragmentation of debates. People easily make assumptions without context. Innuendos are lost on a battlefield of noise.

***

Zapiro is a warhorse and has had to deal with many setbacks and attacks on his work. Zuma has sued him twice – and lost twice – and certain newspaper editors have censored him. 

He talks about why his decades-long associations with the Mail & Guardian and the Sunday Times ended. At the former, he worked under numerous editors and had an excellent relationship with all of them.

Until Verashni Pillay took over. “She was the most politically correct editor I ever worked for in my entire life," he says. (Virtue-signalling comes to mind.)

“I worked harmoniously with people like Anton Harber, Phillip van Niekerk, Nic Dawes, Ferial Haffajee and Angela Quintal during the 20 years. Verashni put me under so much pressure I couldn't take it any more, I had to leave.

“One of my loyal and vital supporters was Mondli Makhanya at the Mail & Guardian and later the Sunday Times. He played a central role during the saga surrounding former president Jacob Zuma's cartoons about Lady Justice and many others. He is also a major contributor to The Showerhead.

“I must also mention that I have a very good relationship with Branko Brkic, editor-in-chief of the Daily Maverick. 

“I was used to negotiating with editors about certain sensitive topics, but it was getting absurd [under Verashni]. As a white man, I am also hyper-aware that I have different life experiences than many other South Africans.

“I always made sure I aimed high, but I've never experienced anyone like that editor. Relentless. So I resigned."

It was like ending a long relationship. There was a sense of loss.

By the way, Zapiro comes from a struggle background – he has been in prison, supported the United Democratic Front and joined the End Conscription Campaign. His mother was involved in progressive organisations and in their home there were regular open-minded conversations about politics.

I know that if he is working on a cartoon that he thinks might be misinterpreted or could offend, he discusses it with many colleagues and friends. We are talking about Zapiro here, not someone who sees his work as an afterthought. 

***

At the Sunday Times, Zapiro also experienced many editors over decades. When Phylicia Oppelt took over, the false news about the South African Revenue Service (Sars) began to appear.

Advocate Rudolf Mastenbroek, an aggrieved former Sars official and ex-husband of the editor, allegedly tried to persuade her to publish articles that damaged the professional reputations of his former colleagues Ivan Pillay, Johann van Loggerenberg and Adrian Lackay.

There were many intrigues and it was a dark time for journalism and South Africa. Sars was reduced to a worthless entity and innocent people lost their jobs.

Zapiro drew a cartoon in which Pravin Gordhan, the former commissioner of Sars, and the incumbent, Tom Moyane, cross swords, with Zuma watching in the background. The cartoon (see below) was an ironic reference to Star Wars, but it went against the Sunday Times' narrative.

He remembers well the day he sent the cartoon to The Times (at the time the sister newspaper of the Sunday Times). The editor of The Times was Stephen Haw.

He contacted Zapiro and let him know that he was putting him (the editor) in a difficult position. “Then I'll give it to someone else," Zapiro said.

Haw asked Zapiro to wait, he would get back to him. Shortly afterwards he informed him the newspaper would publish it, but again emphasised that he was being put in a difficult position.

“We're all in that place," I told him. “It was the beginning of the end. My cartoons in The Times were discontinued. Nobody even told me. Then the Sunday Times said they weren't going to renew my contract."

Another long relationship had come to an end. It hurt.

After that he went to the Daily Maverick, where he is happy. Well, as Dricus “Stillknocks" du Plessis would say: “We know something they don't."

What do they say about doors that close? 

***

Now people are trying to gag Zapiro again. The documentary about him, The Showerhead, was eight years in the making. Indeed a long project, a lot of time was spent on it.

The planned distribution in cinemas is for sometime in September, but it will have to wait until the appeal against the age limit is heard.

He has the same legal team that helped him when Zuma sued. They know the story well.

Anant Singh produced this picture. The cultural activist Ismail Mahomed writes: “Craig Tanner's (the director) film about the rise of Zapiro as one of South Africa's most prolific satirists is a magnificent, many-layered documentary.

“This is a fearless celebration of the robustness of South Africa's constitutional democracy. This documentary follows Zapiro's journey from his childhood to the present day. Role players interviewed include Mondli Makhanya, Ferial Haffajee, Anton Harber and Ronnie Kasrils."

The TV journalist Thinus Ferreira writes that Tanner says: “The irony of a film about freedom of expression having extreme restrictions placed upon those who might wish to see it is plainly lost on the guardians who sit on this censorship panel, purporting to discharge what they consider to be their duty of ensuring that young minds are not troubled or encouraged to think.”

Zapiro tells me about the night the film had its premiere at the 45th Durban International Film Festival. “The place was packed with guests from the industry, people who work with documentaries, it was the last screening at this film festival.

“There are two significant time slots, the first show at this festival and the last one.

“An hour after the picture had started, there was a droning from behind. Just when the focus was on the dripping shower on  Zuma's head. A man with a deep bass voice began to sing in a deep bass voice.

“I heard the words ‘uBaba' and ‘Zuma is my president'. The man was dressed in full Zulu regalia. His voice muffled the sound, one could not hear what was going on.

“The most disturbing aspect," he says, “is that there were members in the audience who spontaneously started singing along. People started humming.

“What does that mean? It's people in the industry, filmmakers who should be promoting freedom of speech, but they're muffling the sound."

Zapiro sits back, we remain silent for a while.

***

Before the interview ends, I want to hear about his childhood and his own children. He tells me as a little boy he couldn't sleep. There were monsters. His mother suggested that he sketch them, he was probably about four. 

Little did she know that monsters can turn into a noble profession. Her name is Gaby and she was a trained social worker. His father, Gershon, was a lawyer.

“He had a strong sense of justice," says Zapiro. “My mother too."

When he talks about his two children, I see him blooming, smiling, all the cares of life rolling off his shoulders.

“My son Tevya is 29 and his sister, Nina, is 24. Tevya is currently travelling in Europe, but before that he wrote a lot, including film reviews. In 2021 he won the Thomas Pringle Award for a review," he says. He has also won other prizes for his writing.

“Tevya first studied philosophy and archaeology at the University of Cape Town and my daughter art at Michaelis. She is also doing well and currently has an exhibition in Cape Town. They are both children with a sense of self, independent, they are their own people."

Zapiro no longer sits behind his drawing boards all day. He cycles, hikes on the mountain, loves to visit the Labia cinema and eat out at the weekend. He can't really cook, but he loves Oriental and Moroccan food.

After hours of talking, the conversation ends. Just before he leaves, he says: “Hey, you know, I kind of miss all those many newspapers that I could read. I must be a dinosaur."

Then I thought, if monsters from your childhood could give you such a full life, the dinosaurs will grow wings and you will fly long and high.

And fight against the censorious hadedas who make more noise than sense.

There's still a lot about Zapiro I didn't get to. For more information visit his website.

The outcome of the appeals process is expected by the end of August. In the meantime, The Showerhead will be shown in any case, on Friday 13 September at Montecasino and The Bioscope in Johannesburg and the Labia in Cape Town. Ster-Kinekor will then release the film on Saturday 14 September at the V&A in Cape Town and Rosebank Nouveau in Johannesburg.

♦ VWB ♦

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