Zapiro, Zuma and us

With his latest Sunday Times cartoon, Zapiro has ventured where angels should fear to tread. I am saying “should” because it shows that journalist-cartoonists can be as desensitised as other South Africans about the social crises that beset us.

I am talking about his shameless use of rape as metaphor.

South Africa has been staggering under an epidemic of sexual violence against women. It is not hypothetical, it is not imagined — it is real. Flesh-and-blood people are suffering actual rapes, sometimes repeatedly, and frequently in the form of gang rapes.

This is the context in which Zapiro presents us with an image of a woman being pinned down by certain political leaders as ANC president Jacob Zuma undoes his pants in apparent preparation to rape her.

The woman is purported to represent “Justicia” — she is blindfolded and the scales of justice are lying next to her. The cartoon depicts what would be regarded as a gang rape, as more than one man is involved in committing the crime.

The primary question is: Can this image be justified in a context of rampant rape and sexual violence against women?

We should remind ourselves that journalists are as much products of their society as anybody else. They can be as prejudiced, or as blind to prejudice, or as unable or unwilling to empathise with fellow human beings as the next person. Indeed, it is accepted in journalistic circles that journalists are probably even more desensitised about human tragedy because it is their bread and butter.

We should also be aware that the Sunday Times has a dismal record when it comes to depictions of women. It is unusual to see women with agency in its pages. To get into the paper in general, women have to evoke certain stereotypes (that is, “mad woman” Manto Tshabalala-Msimang); or be reducible to their bodies (which happens in photographs on the main paper’s front and back pages, on the Business Times‘s front and back pages and sometimes inside the paper as well).

In this particular newspaper a cartoon is published based on an extremely literal interpretation of “they are raping the justice system”. The sense of a lack of imagination is reinforced by the hackneyed use of “Woman as representation”, in this case as “justice”.

The use of Woman as the object of representation is enabled by the process of othering. This is the basis of the Western intellectual tradition with its hierarchical binaries: form/matter; man/woman; white/black and so forth. The second term in these dichotomies is reduced to an aspect of the essentiality of the first term.

Women as real-life subjects are obscured by Woman as object of representation: Woman as “justice” or “the British empire” or “the nation” — or even as a ship or a car that is referred to as “she”. In contrast, men are deemed subjects with agency that choose justice or to expand the empire or to drive a cabriolet.

The cartoon draws on this tradition. The technique of othering is what makes possible a cartoon showing a woman about to be raped against the background of daily rapes. Zapiro has said in the media that he tested the image with a few women before its publication. Did he test it with victims of gang rape? Thousands of women have been sexually violated in our country.

Clearly their response to the image was ultimately regarded as secondary to the “larger political point”. A woman is yet again rendered an object to illustrate a political point.

This is not only lazy thinking but also problematic. At the heart of violence, sexual and otherwise, lies the practice of othering. We see that with the attacks on foreigners and local “others” (Shangaans, Vendas); we see that with violence against women. We see that in the use of rape as weapon of war against the bodies of women who symbolise “the nation” — not “ours” but “theirs”.

The cartoon doesn’t just stick to symbolism. Its impact lies in its straddling of the reality of women’s lives and the representation of Woman as justice. This is the nub of the dis-ease that people say they feel when looking at the image. It uses the very real experiences of thousands of women to make a political comment on power-politics between male protagonists. Note, however, that it is not criticising rape. It uncritically uses sexual violence as the method with which (male) power is entrenched. It therefore reinforces the attitudes that create the conditions for sexual violence.

Another measure of whether this image is justifiable in our context is the political comment itself. Over the past several weeks we have had direct and indirect threats from the parties concerned (the ANC, Cosatu, the SACP, the ANC Youth League) regarding the continued pursuit of the prosecution of Zuma.

The threats boil down to: South African society will be turned upside down if the court case against Zuma is pursued. There is a faint hint of the “make the country ungovernable” public-insurrection phase of the 1980s.

More direct attacks were launched, particularly ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe’s evaluation of the Constitutional Court as “counter-revolutionary”. There is Justice John Hlophe’s alleged attempt at influencing the Constitutional Court on the Zuma case. Meanwhile, the Scorpions are being dismantled as part of the attempt to stop the case.

There has also been a slight backtracking by ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe and Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi. The former chastised the ANC Youth League over its pronouncements. The latter wanted to reassure “minorities” that the ruling alliance did not seek to undermine the judiciary. The ANC has declared that while the Constitutional Court is not above criticism, the party will continue to “uphold” the Constitution.

The cartoon does not reflect any of this. Even if we were to argue that these later reassurances have been flimsy and that the damage has been done, the cartoon still does not make sense. At most we can have a gun against Justicia’s head (if we were to persist with the problematic use of Woman as symbol).

Finally the cartoon falls because of its logic of victimhood. It is overstating both the victimhood of women and the victimhood of the judiciary.

In the case of the former, it capitulates to the popular media’s favoured depiction of “women as victims”, thereby reinforcing patriarchal attempts at robbing women of their agency. This, combined with its use of an objectified woman, makes the cartoon profoundly sexist.

Regarding the victimhood of the judiciary: yes, it is true that the ruling alliance has launched several attacks on the rule of law. But does the ruling alliance have the judiciary/rule of law helplessly pinned down? No. The judiciary has strongly resisted the attempts to undermine it — from reporting Hlophe to the Judicial Services Commission to finding against former premier Ebrahim Rasool’s attempt to abuse the judiciary against an opposition party.

Zapiro and the Sunday Times owe South Africans an apology.

** See my follow-up blog