Cartoonist Andy Mason recently published a history of the art form in South Africa. What’s So Funny? Under the skin of South African Cartooning is the only book of its kind that traces the origins and development of cartooning in South Africa, and its political place in the socio-political context. We send him some questions.
Julius Malema, the young ANC leader recently described by Winnie Mandela as “the future President of South Africa” can get a rise out of people. And he is often a stand-in for all kinds of prejudices. As comic artist Nathan Trantaal told AIAC recently: ”… The South African mainstream likes to have a black man they can laugh at, a black man who says something that is so obviously wrong they can jump at the opportunity to lampoon him. Take Julius Malema, for example. I don’t particularly like the way people talk or write about him. I mean, he’s a dumb bastard, but there’s just something very uncomfortably self-righteous about it. Don’t call a black person dumb in the media every single day. “Dom Kaffir” [dumb kaffir] is what the old government used to say. And whether it is deliberate or not, it has that undercurrent.” Which is why the blog Think Africa Press’ round-up of South African expert opinion on Malema, is so valuable. Here’s a sample from the expert comment by political economist (and former broadcaster) Hein Marias–he wrote the new book South Africa Pushed To The Limit: The Political Economy Of Change:
If the murder of Andries Tatane is a watershed moment in public perceptions of state violence after Apartheid, it is also teaching us a thing or two about South Africa’s media.
Had this police murder happened in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya, we would probably all be glued to our TV screens, praising the BBC or Al-Jazeera for their coverage in bringing images that brought home the extent of the oppression in those countries and the bravery of protesters.
What do we do in South Africa?
We know Jacob Zuma can dance. But can Julius Malema, the future President of South Africa (ha!), dance?
At least we we know that neither Malema or his colleagues at the ANC Youth League understand social media.
Johannesburg’s DJ Cleo throws Malema and social media both in the mix for this video. And gets away with White Economic Empowerment (W.E.E.) tendencies.
* You get the bloody agent reference, right?
Sean Jacobs
Note from a friend who closely watches the South African political scene:
Below [the link follows] is a JZ [Jacob Zuma] post-Durban posting [the ruling party, the ANC, held its policy conference there last weekend], on Baobab, The Economist‘s Africa blog. Am I wrong to scratch my head at everyone claiming JZ emerges from Durban with his power reasserted? Is all it takes one speech where JZ wields the rhetorical hammer and tells the [trade] unions what they want to hear. Is this what he always does to everyone, save [ANC Youth League leader Julius] Malema?. I am just thinking about the media’s really zero-sum coverage of [Zuma] … He is either a dead man walking or the undisputed leader of the party. I actually got the same sense when reading [say Mail & Guardian political reporter] Mandy Rossouw‘s coverage of the NGC [that's the national general council of the ANC, the aforementioned policy conference] … ‘JZ is back.’ Am I missing something here? Was there more going on behind the scenes than just this speech? Sure Malema got the public slapdown, but that has happened before.
Comments?
I finally had a chance to read Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s profile of Jacob Zuma that appeared in “The New Yorker” on the eve of the World Cup final.
You need a password to read the piece. But don’t bother. It’s very elementary stuff for junkies of South African politics. Written in a dry tone, it rehashes the political contests of the last 5 years between Zuma and the now vanquished Thabo Mbeki. Except when Hunter-Gault briefly touches on the subject of Zuma’s successor after 2013 when his term expires (remember he said he’d only run for one term) and brings up race politics–and we’re not talking about white people–within the ruling party, the African National Congress:
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I’ve blogged before (at my old blog address) about the Johannesburg fashion movement, The Smarteez. (More exclusive than the mass outlet Amakipkip.)
Now Dazed Magazine have discovered them. For its June special “South Africa” issue (Africans still get “special issue” status everywhere), the magazine’s editors sent a writer and photographer to profile the designers.
The piece is not online, but a slideshow and a video. On the Dazed blog, writer Rod Stanley has a quote from one of the designers explaining how he feels his generation differs from their older cousins and neighbors: ‘… Too young to really remember the struggle for apartheid, they’re less politicised and claim that their “struggle” is now one against blandness and conformity – to them, it’s all about partying, self-expression and challenging stereotypes.’ I don’t think they care for Julius Malema.
Photographer Chris Saunders, who has been documenting the Smarteez for a while now, took the pictures.
There’s also a short film about the Smarteez on the Dazed website.
– Sean Jacobs
Via Style Bubble. [h/t Nerina Penzhorn]
How do we make sense of the current direction of the ANC, described yesterday by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as purveyors of “gutter politics.” There’s a lot of sound and fury and nonsense passing as analysis. Much of it is focused on Julius Malema, now sent to ANC “political school” for rehabilitation run by a convicted felon. But let’s not get distracted. What does Malema mean? What can we expect from ANC quarters for the foreseeable future. The best take–forwarded to me in an email exchange a few days ago–come from Hein Marais, who, for me at least, still remains one of the trenchant critics of South Africa’s transition*:
… The ANC’s ethical moorings are pretty rickety, and there’s a case to be made that it is also politically unhinged. Rather than a coherent, cohesive organization it now functions as a field, a zone in which motley interests and ambitions can be pursued — which puts a premium on retaining power not for any single, ‘progressive’ objective but in order to facilitate the pursuit of disparate objectives. The ANC can no longer credibly claim to be the custodian of a coherent ‘liberation project’.
Which is exactly why it has to broadcast that claim ever louder and in new ways.
In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News Hugh Masekela, who will perform at the opening ceremony of the 2010 World, speaks the obvious about the long-term meaning of the World Cup. “The World Cup is a passing fancy. It won’t be there on July 12. And South Africa will still have its problems.” That does not mean you can’t enjoy the tournament.
What is more interesting, however, is his take on the current state of South African music. The reporter asks him about “new music,” particularly the remixes built around Julius Malema or the now-famous “touch me in my studio” remark by a black journalist to a white supremacist guest who had threatened the host.
