A Picture and a Thousand Words

For once the newspapers in South Africa are not (only) dominated by Julius Malema; strikes, corruption and service delivery protests; gang rapes or murder trials against the head of the intelligence service.

No.

For once the newspapers also extensively cover an issue of actual relevance and importance for the nation: The President’s penis.

Or to be more precise: a painting thereof.

Some consider the 1.85m high painting of President Jacob Zuma with his fly open and penis out (suitably called “The Spear”) art, others consider it an affront. But regardless of what they think, everyone is talking about it. Words most often used to describe the scandalous work of art are disrespectful, shocking, disgusting, indecent, crude, offensive and even sadistic (?!?).

Even though South Africa constitutionally recognises artistic freedom, the painting has sparked debate on freedom of expression versus the (also constitutionally enshrined) right to dignity and privacy.

Based on this right, the believe that “no human being deserves to be denigrated in this shocking manner” and that “freedom of expression should not mean freedom to insult and harm the dignity of other people”, the ANC Government has decided to go to court and demand that the painting be removed from the Gallery, from the website and that all promotional material be destroyed.

This move has further heated up the debate about the controversial piece of art, which had already been sold for R136 000 to a (good grief) German collector prior to Gallery opening.

Should the Government (or anyone for that matter) be allowed to sue an artist for his work and demand that it not be displayed anymore, essentially censoring it? At a time when press freedom and freedom of information is at risk of being severely reduced, South Africans are very sensitive to these issues.

Yet, many (predominately black) people support the Governments decision to take the artist to court and declare that they would be happy if the Government used “all their tax money to bring him down”. This is quite a statement in a country with little tax revenue, high inequality and numerous better ways to spend a couple of million Rand.

This demonstrates just how offensive the painting is to many black South Africans, who feel that not only the dignity of the President has been undermined, but that their own honour has also been violated.

While the issue may be especially sensitive due to the fact that Zuma is a polygamist (which the South African constitution allows), had been charged for rape (for which he was not found guilty) and comes from the proud Zulu culture, paintings like this would probably spark similar discussion in any other country. How would Germans feel if Angela Merkel was depicted with her breast hanging out of a lustrous outfit? Would Britain’s be happy about a painting of their Queen or newly crowned Princess giving a BJ to the President of the US? What would Italian people say… hang on, let’s not go down that road – they have probably seen it all before...

Fortunately, even though South African’s do not quite agree on the correct solution to the situation, they quickly agreed on the correct response: March!