Entertainment

Critical blood on the pages

December 13, 2009 Edition 1

Maureen Isaacson

Xolela Mangcu in The Democratic Moment explains President Jacob Zuma's accession as "a form of cultural insurgency". In the clash between the elite and mass politics that erupted over Zuma's rise to power he perceives a contemporary political expression of the historical divide amaqaba (the red people) and the amakholwa (the educated converts).

Will Zuma be able to straddle the two worlds without becoming "a schizophrenic leader"?

Mangcu, in looking at this "hybrid politician" who cohabits the worlds of tradition and modernity in politics, examines his own slow journey from elite reluctance, to acceptance and support of Zuma. In an interview, he says: "I have forgiven myself and given myself the opportunity to say, listen to this person."

He writes about the resistance in elite politics - within Parliament, the courts, the executive branches of government, with a particularly scathing focus on the antipathy displayed by the media.

While he talks about a cultural aesthetic which prevents black writers as well as white from supporting Zuma, he goes hammer and tongs after Jonathan Shapiro (aka Zapiro) and other journalists for what he perceives as a racist approach to Zuma in a chapter, "The limits of the cultural aesthetic and liberal modernity".

Mangcu insists he has every reason to criticise Shapiro, although he is not attacking him. "I am criticising a whole range of people on the basis of their work."

You say that Zapiro is stereotyping blacks, but are you not guilty of stereotyping whites?

"For many years I refused to join in the race issues in the media. I was giving people the benefit of the doubt. I have been disappointed by some of the writings by Jonny Steinberg, Anton Harber, Allister Sparks and (the cartoons of) Zapiro. We live in a society for reasons not of our own making that is shot through with race. When Zapiro drew the cartoon depicting Zuma as a rapist ... people in streets were thinking about it in racial terms."

You and Zapiro both speak truth to power and you both take flak for this. Do you think you take as good as you give?

I am not sure, it depends on what is at stake. If I am criticised on the basis of something I have written, my work ... I can take it ... what I cannot take, obviously, is anything outside of that."

You appear to hold yourself aloft. In your columns you "demand of the nation" and counsel the ANC ...

"I do not think that people will act politically on the basis of what I say, that would be overstating myself and my influence. I was brought up and trained to state my position. It is an affirmation of what I think, it is who I am. I was brought up, to have to, under the most difficult conditions in this country, stand up as a young black kid, from the day I was a little boy, and (later) at Wits University as a student leader and say to a room full of students ... this is what I think ... it is very important - this expression of my identity. It is about growing up in a country where you are always taught to shut up."

You have in the past suggested to your readers who you believe our leaders should be. You have admitted to having accepted shares from Tokyo Sexwale.

"People said because I accepted the Batho Bonke shares from Tokyo in 2005 that was why I was supporting Tokyo for the candidacy ... you would see at one point I was punting Terror Lekota.

"If Tokyo had given me millions of rands to punt him why would I have been punting Terror Lekota? I never even once until ... he announced his candidacy ... that whole argument falls flat on its face. I have been supporting other people and never saying anything about him. Is he going to run for the presidency?

You write: "There is a certain mob psychology about Zuma in the media and among the so-called elites that I find frightening. The only problem is that mob psychology only begets mob psychology.

"This is a long way of saying there is a race war waiting to happen in this country, and people such as Shapiro will have played no small part in fanning the flames."

"For a very long time the elite have arrogated unto themselves the right to describe other people's behaviour as mob psychology... they ask how could you possibly ask (the same of them). There were a number of columns in which David Beresford, Harber and Sparks, in quick succession, questioned the notion of innocence until proven guilty.

"When people undermine some of the fundamental tenets of liberal democracy they are irrational and that is one of the facets of mob psychology. Whatever we put out there has an impact on the other side of the railway lines. We need to be responsible for what we put out there.

"In my I book say there is a cultural aesthetic (that sets people against Zuma)... one would think all I am saying is that it is about race. but it is far more differentiated than that... I don't know why we are stuck on this in this interview because I say there are black writers who were prejuidiced against Zuma.

"I am not prejudiced against Zuma because at a particular point in time I began to listen and people were saying all these things. Is it possible that all these people have false consciousness?

"We have seen in this country something we have never seen in our history, the great unwashed claiming their right to citizenship against the will of the elite who have always arrogated to themselves the notion of rulership. And here we are having the people we always looked down on ... (in place)".

Jonathan Shapiro, aka Zapiro, in September last year published a cartoon in the Sunday Times, in which he portrayed President Jacob Zuma, Zwelinzima Vavi and Gwede Mantashe about to gang rape a woman whom he depicted as "Lady Justice". Xolela Mangcu wrote in The Democratic Moment: "This cartoon caused such revulsion in the country that Zuma filed a lawsuit against Zapiro."

He wrote: "Zapiro could not be bothered, for his right to freedom of expression trumped Zuma's right to dignity. And it did not matter to him that Zuma had been acquitted by a court of law of rape. He published a cartoon labelling me and other journalists and commentators 'previously sensible individuals'. What struck me about this was the sense of entitlement and authority with which such labels were dispensed: sensible by whose standards?"

Shapiro, in an interview with the Sunday Independent, says it is unfair to accuse him of not being bothered. "This makes it look as if I don't give a damn about anything except the cartoon. I have enormous concerns for freedom, dignity, human rights and, in this instance, for how I depict women. But I agree with him that I hold freedom of expression in higher regard than whether Zuma's feelings were hurt."

On Zuma's acquittal: "That's not what the cartoon was about. It was about Zuma's continuing abuse of the justice system."

Mangcu wrote: "The cartoon is a recycling of the age-old racist stereotype about the uncontrollable, sex-crazed black male... And even if you do not want to accept the Zuma acquittal, on what basis can you infer that Mantashe and Vavi and others in the cartoon are gang rapists?"

Shapiro said: "It's a metaphor! There's a caricature of a real person who is clearly, but not in an explicitly drawn way, about to rape a woman who is clearly an allegorical figure. The others in the cartoon who are holding her down are also caricatures of real people. So the central metaphor is the aggressive abuse of the justice system.

"Cartoonists everywhere use violent metaphors to portray the abuse of democratic values. A cartoon like mine could be about Ronald Reagan when he stacked the American Supreme Court with right-wing judges. It could be Berlusconi in Italy. Long after the controversy I was made aware that there was a cartoon of Berlusconi - raping justice, and more explicitly drawn."

On Xolela's racial inference: "When I ran the cartoon by my editor Mondli Makhanya, we were both satisfied with the clarity of the message. But how one tries to communicate and how one's images are received are two different things. If one is a progressive and one is trying to keep a consistency in one's work and support for constitutionality and human rights and the underdog... the best one can do is to hope my work and others can be seen in a continuum.

"Xolela and some others seem determined to avoid the substantive judicial issue and instead play the race card. It's like taking a sentence from an author's body of work and deliberately misconstruing it. He knows well I've been consistently anti-racist. Of course the image is disturbing but it was enlightening to find more support for it from women than from men. On radio talk shows a number of rape survivors, including a gang rape survivor, phoned in to express their approval."

On Mangcu's statement: "There is a certain mob psychology about Zuma in the media and among the so-called elites that I find frightening."

"This is outrageous and twisted; the mob psychology is what happened during Zuma's rape trial when Kwezi (the rape complainant) was burned in effigy and Zuma did not stem the tide - and Julius Malema says, 'We will kill for Zuma' - that is not a metaphor, which Xolela says it is. There were critics from different racial groups... who said this is frightening... but after the cartoon (depicting Zuma raping the justice system) at an ANC Youth League rally someone gets up says that Zapiro should be shot and killed for writing these things.

"I had admired Zuma in the mid-1990s for his rootedness, his commitment and for being a reconciler in KZN, and later in Burundi. My criticism of Zuma had nothing to do with the class background Xolela talks about."

Shapiro says: "Like Samuel Goldwyn, include me out... of the elites whom Mangcu says (and Mangcu includes himself) were attracted by Thabo Mbeki's whisky and intellectual tones and repelled by Zuma's traditionalism."

Shapiro says his problems lay with substantive issues, such as the corruption case against Zuma, the arms deal and the Shaik brothers. And though Zuma wasn't convicted of rape, he demeaned women during the trial.

"Xolela protests too much. He describes himself constantly as an intellectual. When he saw this phrase 'previously sensible' in the cartoon he had to resort to ad hominem attacks. I was struck by how tissue-thin his skin is when I put him in the cartoon (about previously sensible people). He says that media people should criticise each other.

"I stand by the cartoon and have been able to defend it in greater depth elsewhere. And the kind of criticism being discussed here is by no means universal. The cartoon received both major South African annual journalistic awards for cartooning - the Mondi Shanduka and the Vodacom awards. I'm especially gratified that it also received the MISA Press Freedom Award. Meanwhile, I've moved on. Despite my earlier opposition to how Zuma came to power I acknowledge the reality of his presidency. I've suspended the showerhead, making it my 'political barometer', a device enabling me to both criticise and praise him."