Zapiro sports a fresh theme

Renowned for his hard hitting political commentary, editorial cartoonist ZAPIRO (Jonathan Shapiro) has sifted through some 4000 drawings to extract the best of his sport themed cartoons for a presentation he made this past week at the Cape Town Book Fair. Africartoons was there to take notes.

The presentation opened with a word filled cartoon extolling the virtues of All Black wing Jonah Lomu; taking us back to that incredible 1995 Rugby World Cup hosted and won by South Africa. A cartoon celebrating that victory was followed by one celebrating Bafana Bafana's soccer triumph at the following year's Africa Cup of Nations, also held here.

Madiba Magic permeates throughout those early years of South Africa's readmission to world sporting competition. Zapiro's cartoons gratefully acknowledge the then president's contribution just as his subject acknowledges the power of sport to heal: "Nation building is a whole new ball game", Mandela is purported to say in one cartoon which found its way into an unofficial spin-off industry of fridge magnets.

The cartoons were organised to tell a story, and so were not necessarily chronologically or thematically ordered. Thus, Baggio's penalty in the 1994 Soccer World Cup found its place after many cartoons which succeeded it by publication date. Each cartoon came with a brief anecdote by the cartoonist, as he took his audience to World Cups and Olympic games long forgotten.

But who could forget our failed bid to host what eventually became the Athens Olympic Games... and Zapiro's subsequent cartoon (read out by Mandela in parliament) with the caption: "Athen's se ma se moer!". Mandela deliberately replaced Zapiro's expletive symbols with the swearword, and Zapiro expressed relief that the less discrete Cape Town alternative was not used!

Sporting and political commentary inevitably mix together and true to his nature, Zapiro has not shied away from making hard pressing statements. On the lack of transformation he depicts Mandela joining dissident rugby fan Trevor Manuel in the haka, and in another cartoon Ali Bacher defends the racial demographic of the Proteas who look more like the 'Lilly Whites'. The precarious survival of the Springbok emblem is recorded, as is the rise and fall of Louis Luyt, Hansie Cronje, Tiger Woods, and  Benni McCarthy.

Cartoons celebrating the many achievements of our rugby and cricket teams, our Olympians and Paralympians, and specifically Penny Heyns, Ernie Els and Oscar Pistorius are all there to remind us of those triumphs. These are balanced by sobering reminders of some low points such as betting scandals, doping cheats, prejudice in sport, administrative interference and rugby thuggery. Such as the time (remembered fondly by some old school rugby fans as 'The Day the Fan hit the Shit') when a Springbok fan ran on to the test match pitch and assaulted the referee after one too many bad calls.

Zapiro thanks Charles Dempsey for scuppering South Africa's bid to host the 2006 Soccer World Cup ("because we'd never have been ready for it") and diligently records how Danny Jordaan and his team did our bidding for the next World Cup and won it, culminating in a host of cartoons from that fantastic event.

If Zapiro's motivation to gather these cartoons and present them at the Book Fair was intended to test the water for a book on the subject, he will have come away from it with a resounding affirmation that such a collection would be well received. A little editing, and some work on a thread to tie the cartoons together would not be a wasted exercise. But there is no doubt that Zapiro's account of South Africa's sporting history since readmission is a worthy record, and must be published. Lighter in subject matter and tone than his political collections, perhaps this one could have the unlikely title of "ZAPIRO: All in Good Sport"?

Posted on Aug 05, 2010 by Africartoons