Zapiro, Zuma and us – Part 2. Using rape against rape

Recently Dr Mamphela Ramphele astutely observed that the problem with African leaders is their inability “to envision their roles as agents of fundamental transformation of their societies”. I want to extend her point to those in the business of manufacturing public opinion, in particular journalists and cartoonists.

Ramphele uses the example of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. For all his “anti-colonial” bluster, Mugabe has always had an unhealthy reverence for things British. He, like many other African leaders, craves the trappings of colonial power.

“Liberation heroes” ejected the colonial masters, just to adopt their tools and systems of power. Instead of working out models that redress power relations with due regard to the particularities of each post-colonial society, they merely modified the colonial state while barely disturbing its anti-democratic building blocks.

Ramphele puts it memorably: “Unfortunately, many of our leaders cast themselves in the roles of the very colonial masters they replaced. Their revolutionary fire for freedom from oppression has too often turned into a passion for emulating the same oppressors and their methods. Such emulation is both in symbolic and material terms.

“Just cast your mind to the installation of Robert Mugabe on (June 29 2008) after the sham election to see the symbolism of British colonialism writ large. Witness the stiff ceremony with white-wigged, red-robed and solemn judges adorning Mugabe with the same type of cross-band of office that was used by Governor-generals of the colonial era. It is a tragic indicator of the deep seated yearning to be the master just like the one he replaced – more British than the British,’’ she argues.

Ugandan scholar Prof Mahmood Mamdani has also written about the continuation of the colonial state in post-colonial Africa. This is done through the continued bifurcation of the state into civil and customary realms. In the former citizens have rights; in the latter they are subjects ruled over by despotic chiefs — still.

Mamdani also looks at the perpetuation of the colonial processes of racialisation and ethnicisation that were activated during the colonial period. This has led to the genocide in Rwanda, among others. I have argued elsewhere that this may lie at the heart of the recent public violence against black outsiders.

Similarly, Frantz Fanon in a scathing exposition in The Wretched of the Earth dissected the post-colonial national bourgeoisie’s ignorance and materialism while it props up extractive, non-productive capitalism on the periphery of the world order.

All of this confirms Ramphele’s point: the post-colonial story in Africa has been one in which inherited habits of power are reproduced while societies sink further into socio-economic misery.

These are the post-colonial patterns that South Africans are at risk of repeating. It seems we are mostly aware of this, especially recently due to the onslaught against constitutional institutions and values.

After the hiatus of rainbowism, fever-pitch contestation has erupted over the content of our democracy. Opinion-makers and journalists are compelled to decide whether they want to bolster inherited power configurations or transform them.

To make it relevant at this particular juncture: do the Zapiro cartoons that the Sunday Times and Mail & Guardian have published since September 7 challenge or affirm inherited power hierarchies? This blog is an elaboration of the previous one on this question.

The yardstick should be the Constitution because even “political satire” and “journalistic principles” (proffered by one reader in response to my last blog) are not above our founding social contract.

Based on constitutional values, Ramphele comes up with the following vision of transformation: “a radical shift in the frame of reference for social relationships … (I)t entails redefining power relationships from a zero-sum game to relationships that recognise the mutual benefits of empowerment of all to enable them to contribute their very best to their societies.

“Such social relationships would have no place for racism, sexism, authoritarianism or any other form of discrimination. Diversity would be celebrated not as a cliché but as an essential ingredient of success, peace and prosperity in an interconnected globalising world,” she concludes.

This vision of a “radical shift in the frame of reference for social relationships” is what is required if we are serious about not re-entrenching colonial and apartheid binary hierarchies. Zapiro’s cartoons during the past week fail this test despite their attempt to warn against the abuse of power.

The difficulty with the metaphor of rape in these cartoons is that this critique of the violation of rights is in itself a violation of rights.

Obscuring and minimising real-life women’s experiences of sexual violence through the use of Woman as object of representation is a violation. Using a depiction of the (imminent) violation of a woman’s body to protest against the (imminent) violation of the rule of law is a fundamental contradiction.

This could have been avoided if freedom of expression was not approached as an absolute right. It is not. It should be balanced with the other rights contained in the bill of rights.

To entrench democracy and human rights and to break with the former “oppressors and their methods”, “both in symbolic and material terms”, we need to radically (down to the root) transform social relations of power.

Radical transformation is impossible while we’re clinging to symbols designed to minimise real lives. Or to crass satire that infringes some rights in the name of protecting others. But this will obviously only be a concern if we as journalists regard ourselves as agents of fundamental transformation of all unequal social relations, including gender.