Zapiro Related News

FROM BEING BANNED TO BEING IDOLISED

As global attention is focused on the ailing Nelson Mandela, a recent radio interview and two online slideshows featuring South African cartoonists tells the story of the icon's life through editorial cartoons.

But Mandela's cartoonography is missing a few chapters, at least from a South African perspective. For one thing, the struggle hero's image was banned by the apartheid government's 'Banned Persons Act (1950)' which prohibited the quoting, referencing and depiction of political opponents.

And then, in about 1989 when those laws became relaxed, and in 1990 when they were lifted, cartoonists - starved of any graphic reference of the famous prisoner because of the ban - were stretched to imagine what he looked like after 27 years in prison.

The interview and slideshows tell how the cartoonists overcame these challenges and went on to produce perhaps the most positive cartoon narrative of any politician's life ever told.

In a rare written response to criticism over his cartoons, Zapiro has come out in defence of his latest to cause a stir.

The cartoon depicts the brutal torture by police of a Mozambican taxi driver, who later died.

Many readers (in comments on our facebook page, and elsewhere) expressed outrage at what they saw as being a disrespectful depiction of the victim in a cartoon, while many others have said that it is fair comment in that it targets the perpetrators, not the victim.

ZAPIRO DECLINES TO RECIPROCATE

Africartoons welcomes the news that President Zuma has dropped all charges against cartoonist ZAPIRO in what appears to be a response to the best legal advice the president has received on the matter.

And if recent reports of Zuma's legal budget are anything to go by, that advice hasn't come cheaply. Who knows how much of the cost of this suit is to be picked up by the taxpayer?

Hopefully that issue will soon be brought to light by our thriving investigative journalists, and then duly addressed by Zapiro and his fellow editorial cartoonists. Because an important detail of this withdrawal of the president's case against the cartoonist is that Zapiro, with the backing of his newspaper, has refused to compromise in his stand for free expression.

(AGAIN!)

Despite the judges' observation that the general standard of editorial cartoons has improved over the years, Jonathan Shapiro (pen named ZAPIRO) has once again emerged as the winner of a national award acknowledging his class after his cartoon was adjudicated to be the best by judges of the Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Awards (editorial cartoons category).

Zapiro has been the recipient of the award before, going back to its previous incarnation as part of the Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Awards.