Jacob Zuma, Zapiro and Sarah Palin

At first glance, this might look like a shameless attempt to gain reads by listing the hottest topics in the South African blogosphere right now. And in some ways, it is: you have no idea how motivating it is to watch your name slipping down the rankings on the Thought Leader home page. I may never topple Michael Trapido, but hey, a girl can dream.

Seriously, though, Jacob Zuma, Zapiro and Sarah Palin really do have something in common. Here’s why.

Palin was roundly criticised by the left-leaning media predictably appalled by a huntin’, shootin’, fishin’, Creationist, anti-abortion hockey mom who — to make that mouthful even more distasteful to Prius-driving pinko-liberal Obama-supporters — also has sex appeal and the apparent ability to connect with ordinary middle Americans, at least at this stage of the campaign.

As we saw, that kind of criticism did nothing to dampen enthusiasm for the Republican vice-presidential nominee. If anything, the left-leaning media played into the hands of the Republicans, coming across as the snobbish, intolerant elite that non-hardcore Democrats have always perceived them to be anyway. Their attacks on Palin have merely served to cement her position as a feisty underdog, the cute pitbull-with-lipstick you want on your side. Any criticism from the usual suspects will now have little impact on those American voters who were undecided in the first place; they’ll take accusations that Palin is a hypocrite because of her pregnant teenaged daughter with a pinch of salt.

Attack a controversial figure with too much ferocity and you may end up positioning him or her as a victim. (Sensibly, Hillary Clinton has limited criticism of Palin while campaigning for Obama.)

In the same way, I suspect that Zapiro’s latest Jacob Zuma cartoon will have the opposite effect to what was intended. Certainly, the comments on Michael Trapido’s piece here indicate strong support for Zapiro by people who are not fans of Zuma. But there are plenty of South Africans — many of them not traditional Zuma supporters by any stretch of the imagination — who aren’t convinced he’s that bad. (I was always intrigued by the fact that my late mother-in-law liked Zuma and was always convinced that Zuma had been wrongfully accused by a woman determined to trap him.)

For a start, I think of my own reaction to that cartoon. I am not a fan of Zuma in any way, shape or form, and I happen to agree that he and his cronies are undermining the judicial system. But Zapiro’s depiction of Zuma as a slavering rapist prompted (aroused seems an injudicious word in the circumstances) something approaching sympathy for the man. I wonder how many others experienced a similar reaction?

If I think back to the way Zuma has been satirised over the past three years, it strikes me that Zapiro has been out on his own in his continued aggressive targeting of Zuma for some time now. I remember how, even back in August 2006, when I was compiling material for my first collection of South African insults, the Zuma jokes stopped being funny. Chris Forrest was performing as a supporting act for David Kau and his Zuma jokes raised a tired chuckle, almost out of a sense obligation more than anything else. We’d heard it all before. For some reason that I’ve never quite been able to articulate, laughing at Zuma had stopped feeling cathartic or subversive.

Not that I dispute the importance of what Zapiro is saying with that cartoon: the discomfort he evokes may be necessary to jolt those who have been busily reconciling themselves with the inevitability of a Zuma presidency out of their complacency. But by depicting the danger Zuma and his cronies pose to South African democracy in such a crude and shocking way, Zapiro may well have prompted many readers of the Sunday Times to view Zuma as the victim here. Which is surely the last thing he wanted.