Amid Uproar, Graphic Painting of South African President Is Removed From Gallery

To the artist and a gallery director, it was a scathing piece of satire — a riff on Soviet-style propaganda aimed at a powerful president with a controversial sexual history who presides over a liberation movement-turned-political party that many here feel has lost its revolutionary appeal. But to that party, the African National Congress; many black South Africans; and, most of all, the man it depicted, President Jacob Zuma, the painting — which portrayed Mr. Zuma in a Leninesque pose with his genitals exposed — was a reminder of the pain and humiliation frequently visited on black bodies by white hands under apartheid.

On Wednesday, both sides agreed to disagree on the merits of the painting, “The Spear,” by the Cape Town artist Brett Murray, which was part of an exhibit at the Goodman Gallery here. But they agreed on one thing: It would no longer be on display. In exchange for the A.N.C.’s agreeing to drop a lawsuit, the gallery agreed to remove the work, which had already been vandalized, from the exhibition. The battle over the painting pit the right to free expression, which has been increasingly under pressure in South Africa, against what the A.N.C. argued was Mr. Zuma’s right to dignity. It demonstrated that even as the years tick by since apartheid’s end, the wounds of that brutal system remain deep.

The portrayal of the president’s genitals in a painting by a white artist outraged many black South Africans who argued that it harked back to apartheid-era humiliations meted out against them. The A.N.C. and its allies called for protest marches and a boycott of a newspaper that had published a photograph of the painting. After two weeks of resistance on free speech grounds, the gallery agreed to remove the painting. “The debate engendered by this work has been robust and rich and will continue,” said a joint statement released by the Goodman Gallery and the A.N.C. “But what is also clear is the real distress and hurt that this image has caused some people. The image has conjured up past historical hurts and humiliations for some people.”

Both sides claimed victory in a conciliatory but at times tense news conference at the gallery. “In this process, we have stood very firm with respect to our belief in freedom of artistic expression,” said the gallery’s director, Liza Essers, adding that the exhibition would continue without “The Spear.” An A.N.C. spokesman, Jackson Mthembu, said freedom of expression must be balanced against human dignity and shared understanding. “All of us have a duty to build a commonly shared geographic space called South Africa,” he said. “We cannot do so if we do not appreciate the humiliation of the past to some degree.” The agreement was an attempt to end a bitter public battle over the painting. Gallery staff members had received death threats. Vandals wrote “traitor” on the car of a black gallery employee, and two men defaced the painting, obscuring both the face and the genitals.

As often happens in post-apartheid South Africa, the arguments often broke along racial lines. White commentators tended to focus on the artist’s right to expression and the right of newspapers and other publications to show photographs of the painting. The gallery, which draws a largely white audience, and whose administrative and curatorial staff has only one black member, drew harsh criticism from unexpected quarters. Several black writers, some of whom are often harshly critical of the A.N.C. and Mr. Zuma, said the work tapped apartheid-era fears. “Regardless of the artist’s intentions, ‘The Spear’ became a proxy for the anger over the many unremedied injuries, large and small, that blacks have suffered at the hands of whites and for the lack of cognizance of these offenses,” wrote Osiame Molefe, a columnist for the news Web site The Daily Maverick.

Nudity in particular is a delicate issue. Under apartheid-era laws, black people who were not carrying a required pass were subject to strip searches by the police, and black miners were often stripped by overseers looking for gold hidden in their body cavities. The idea of a white man painting the penis of a black man, particularly the nation’s leader, struck many people as insensitive. Under apartheid, the columnist Justice Malala wrote for The Times of Johannesburg, “the black man was viewed as a sex-obsessed, lazy ... well, animal, really. We were not human here.”

In an open letter to one of Mr. Zuma’s daughters, Ferial Haffajee, the editor of The City Press, the newspaper that printed the photograph of the painting, said she regretted the decision. “Our common national dignity is a paper-thin one; a chimera in parts,” she wrote. “The exposure of black genitalia is still a raw and festering wound — its resurrection in any form a painful flashback to the various and many indignities inflicted on the black body from colonialism to its later manifestation as apartheid.”

Ms. Essers said such an interpretation did not occur to her or to Mr. Murray as they planned and designed the exhibition, which broadly satirizes the corruption and misrule that have plagued the A.N.C. in recent years. Mr. Mthembu said that while the party might not like the other images on display, it objected only to “The Spear.”

Mr. Zuma was acquitted in 2006 of charges that he had raped a young woman. He said the sex had been consensual, but was widely criticized for testifying that although he knew the woman was infected with the virus that causes AIDS, he did not use a condom.

He said he showered afterward in an effort to prevent infection, a statement that angered many AIDS activists and health officials here. A practicing polygamist, Mr. Zuma has four wives and more than 20 children.

Source: New York Times

Malema defends 'his hero' Mokaba

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema has accused a journalist of forging his signature in a bid to discredit him, although it is not clear whether he plans to press charges. The controversial Malema also defended his hero and former youth league leader, the late Peter Mokaba, who was described as a confessed apartheid agent by a newspaper columnist last week. Malema was speaking at an ANCYL rally in Durban, on the day that the City Press newspaper proclaimed him a liar on its front page.

The newspaper said it had proof that he did indeed hold shares in a company that had won lucrative contracts in his home province of Limpopo. It accused Malema of lying when he claimed at a press conference last week that he had never signed any papers to become a member of SGL Engineering Projects - a company of which he became a director and majority shareholder last May. The newspaper published extracts of a form apparently signed by Malema as a company director as proof that he remaineda director, despite his claims to the contrary.

It said company registration records it had seen last week showed that Malema owned 70 percent of SGL Engineering Projects and that, in addition to signing on as director, he signed in order giving power of attorney to his business partner. He had signed a third time to take up his majority shareholding, it said. But in his latest accusations that the media were out to smear him, Malema told the rally in Durban that the report was all lies. "A journalist decided to fake a signature of Julius Malema because they want to portray me as a bad person," he said during the rally in Lamontville. It could not be established whether the youth league leader had opened a case of fraud against the reporter in question.

ANCYL spokesman Floyd Shivambu declined to comment. "Don't ever phone me at this time. I only work office hours," he said before cutting the call. Last night, City Press editor-in-chief Ferial Haffajee said she was shocked by Malema's claim and that the newspaper would consult lawyers. Haffajee said she had personally seen the documents and would stand by the reporters. Moreover, they had offered to send the documents to the youth league so that Malema's signatures could be verified, but this offer had not been taken up. "I will stand by the report. There is no reason for us to forge these documents. Throughout the week the youth league has hit out at newspapers and journalists, but not once have the gone to the ombudsman or the courts," she said.

Malema told the media last week that he had instructed his lawyers to remove him as director of four companies in May 2008 after he was elected ANC youth leader. He added that he had not received R140 million from government contracts.

The Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) confirmed last week that Malema remained listed as the director of four companies, including SGL Engineering Projects, which was registered in December 2009. It had not received any written notification that Malema had resigned his directorships as claimed.

Malema also defended Mokaba in his address yesterday, saying attempts to discredit his predecesor were aimed at demoralising the league. Author Jacob Dlamini, writing in Business Day last week, noted that the corruption in the league "did not begin with Malema". "The rot set in under Peter Mokaba, a confessed apartheid agent and a man as corrupt as they came. Mokaba drove a five-series BMW and owned at least one hair salon when many of his political contemporaries were still getting around by minibus taxi. "Mokaba helped set up a national tourism forum through which he and some ANC Youth League comrades, one of whom is now a deputy minister, fleeced the Taiwanese of millions of rands." But Malema told supporters that Mokaba had been portrayed as an apartheid spy because he represented change. "The media will never win because we (youth league members) are encouraged by the spirits of our forefathers," said Malema. He said the media had also tried to portray Zuma as a bad person.

Although no one has accused Malema of theft, but have questioned the practice of tenderpreneurs by highly placed politicians, the youth league leader nevertheless insisted that he had not stolen from the poor. "I have not stolen anything from the poor. If I have stolen from the poor President Jacob Zuma's government has a right to arrest me. I must be investigated, arrested and prosecuted. This attack on us is aimed at derailing the leadership of the youth... But the media will not succeed," he said.

Source: IoL