Zapiro and the cliché of violence

Forgive me for resorting to the following hackneyed, worn-out story. Shortly before I met my wife some six years ago, she was dragged screaming and gibbering down the driveway by a gang of strong young men so that they could have the pleasure of her and perhaps leave her for dead in the fields near her home not far from Northgate shopping centre in Jo’burg.

She was saved by her son and because her screaming could easily be heard by the neighbours, so the strong young men ran away. Her house was broken into several times. On one occasion “they” came through the back door with an axe while she and her son rapidly went out the front door. But I am sure my readership is by now already bored with my ho-hum, everyday report; “Say something interesting, Rod, get to the point,” you may or may not insist.

Zapiro’s first cartoon on raping the judiciary system met with a huge uproar, was far from boring like my anecdote above and, broadly speaking, gave him a large “for” and “against” vote for his cartoon. Some enraged leaders slammed him for doing further violence to South Africa’s women and over the subject of “literal” rape, which the cartoon is not about. My wife does not see it as literal rape or a comment on the abuse of women at all. Sure, her point of view is a statistic of one, but from what I have read, many other woman commentators on Thought Leader would agree with my wife. Some, like Christi van der Westhuizen, read their own agenda into the cartoon and refuse to this day to take responsibility for her remarks by respecting her readers, including me, and engaging with the crucial watershed South Africa is facing.

Zapiro, partly in a classic response to all the hullabaloo created by his cartoon, gave the finger to all and sundry and published a new version of the cartoon, where Zuma now says: “But before we start, I just want to say how much we respect you.” Zapiro is one courageous poet of the visual arts and I salute him. My jaw dropped when I saw the new cartoon, and I muttered: “He’s had the guts to do it again!” What about death threats?

The likes of Van der Westhuizen feel the cartoon(s) should perhaps be watered down, and apparently, according to her, holding a gun against the goddess Justicia’s head is the only visual punch to the face Zapiro should be allowed to draw. We all know such an image would have had no effect on us. Guns against heads? Boring clichés. But they are not boring; if I had a gun held against my head while my pockets were being emptied, I would be waking up from nightmares for a long time after. To see someone doing that to my wife is unthinkable. So Van der Westhuizen is actually suggesting that other forms of violence, like someone threatening to blow your head off, are perfectly acceptable and Zapiro can depict those. That is how irresponsible and blinkered her article is.

I toyed with the idea of having Zuma urinate on a bouquet of flowers with the judiciary system worded on the bouquet’s wrapping, but that image is so, so wuss. Perhaps Zuma could be urinating on the goddess Justicia, with certain drunken judges and other eminent personages looking on in approval as they teeteringly stop their cars which they are driving way over the permitted alcohol limit. Judge Nicholson could be mildly admonishing them all with a blindfold over his eyes saying “garrulous blather” written across the blindfold. This would possibly ensure the cartoonist gets away with the rape charge. But a fresh one would be issued for having contempt for women and still, in essence, violating women. All the charges, hypothesised or otherwise, are missing the point as “we” remain indifferent to the fact that South Africa is being raped on a very deep, insidious level (which does not detract one iota from the unspeakable injustices done to women, including to my wife).

This much is made clear in Judge Nicholson’s horrifying conclusions as Zuma gets off the hook yet again and asks his henchmen to bring him his machine gun. Sentletse Diakanyo recently used the following passage from Judge Nicholson’s verdict on Zuma. The good judge’s language is a display of dazzling verbal hedging and sleight of hand:

“… when a party has peculiar knowledge of a fact he is not for that reason saddled with the burden of proving that fact: peculiar knowledge affects the quantum of evidence expected from the party but does not affect the incidence of the burden of proof. If such party fails to adduce evidence, in other words to transmit his or her knowledge to the court, the inference which is least favourable to the party’s cause may be drawn from the proven facts.”

Nicholson, in this frightening paragraph, says nothing while saying everything about what currently matters. In simple English (or rather, I should just say English) he is saying that if you have a particular item of knowledge relevant to a court case, you need not be “saddled” with the irksome task of having to prove it. By withholding the necessary evidence an “inference” “least favourable” can be passed on the withholding party: this latter point is fair enough. But all of a sudden the judge then says the “facts” have to be “proven”, and, with regard to Zuma, no facts have been proven or properly examined.

At the same time the good judge is implying something on a much broader level than the mere linguistic items in his text. This is a watershed moment in the country and now he has, in effect, submitted that the leader of the ANC does not have to take responsibility and stand trial for the many charges against him — and the incumbent president is now viewed as the criminal. I personally think Judge Nicholson is a frightened man too scared to come up with the alternate verdict and I can’t blame him, I don’t like death threats … oh, I could carry on but this is where these kinds of discussions lead: nowhere.

Zapiro’s new cartoon does lead us somewhere. He and the other leaders who favour him this time have their eyes closed, like their victim, the goddess Justicia. In her subverted state she can only be “objective” provided she is victimised. The ANC leaders are also “objective” and blind to what they are about to do: lead us all into a greater heart of darkness, perhaps greater than what this country has ever known. Like a poet, Zapiro shows attention to detail. I don’t think it was a mistake when he took away the drop of water coming out the shower spout on Zuma’s head in the second version of the cartoon. So, when Zuma has “finished proceedings”, not even the pitiful attempt to sanitise his state organ is going to happen, and slowly but surely we will all be further affected/infected.

Zapiro’s is an ugly, ugly image but it gets a truly post-Conradian point across to us very simply. We are invited to open our eyes and — somehow — sidestep the well of darkness in front of us all. And that does not matter if you live in China or Bryanston. On that note, the Chinese readership is deeply concerned.