July 21st 2012
It is hardly unusual for an elected politician to be portrayed irreverently in pop art and counter-culture and when they are, their best response is to observe the Streisand Principle and say as little as possible at risk of bringing greater public attention to it. In other words, once a politician starts complaining about their public treatment they’ve already lost the argument.
When earlier this year South African president Jacob Zuma was the subject of an avant-garde painting, modeled on a socialist realism portrait of Vladimir Lenin—but with his genitals exposed—the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party responded with fury, branding the painting an affront to the president’s dignity, went to court to have it banned, launched street demonstrations of its supporters in front of the gallery concerned, threatened a state boycott of an independent newspaper that published the picture and raised the heat on political and racial discourse. The painting was eventually defaced by a government supporter and later withdrawn by the gallery in a settlement with the ANC that prevented the case from going to court.
Among many other things the case pushed on hot button issues of race and sexuality, the appropriate place for art in social commentary and highlighted the question of whether South Africa is a western or African country. Institutionally, and on paper at least, South Africa is in line with western and international norms, with an effective parliament, liberal constitution and a vibrant, open, civil society.
But social and other forces bubbling in this society and the ruling party point to a very different situation. South Africa is not at peace with itself and the country’s institutions, including independent judiciary, free press and rule of law—the basis of liberalism—are at odds with the ideological convictions of the ruling party, still a revolutionary liberation movement that has accommodated but is not committed to liberalism. The government increasingly signals that it regards the Constitution, the courts, property rights and the press as hindrances to its freedom of maneuver, as well as its fervently supported “transformation” agenda and the “National Democratic Revolution” (NDR).
The latter is an ideological blue print that promises to redress socio-economic differences stemming from colonialism, apartheid and capitalism, ending with the achievement of a “national democratic society”—a socialist nirvana in which the working class is economically and politically empowered over white capital and the bourgeoisie. Key aspects include the redistribution of wealth, affirmative action to make institutions “demographically representative” and political action to take control of “all centres of power” by deploying members of the ruling party to directly manage state bodies and, more gradually, the economy and the courts. The policy—cadre deployment—is criticised for politicizing government departments and contributing to the administrative collapse that now characterises service delivery in South Africa.
Rooted in Marxist ideology—specifically, Lenin’s theory of imperialism—the NDR was adopted by the ANC in exile in 1969 and remains central to its thinking. On this basis the chipping away at institutional independence and media freedoms is not merely the aggravated reaction of a government held to account for its failures, it is a detailed doctrinal road map of where it wants to take the country.
This vision is fundamentally at odds with political liberalism and the constitutional guarantees that accompanied South Africa’s transition from minority rule to a law-based democracy. The ANC justifies the current situation in which it is in power and politically dominant but constrained by the constitution and the courts as a holding period prior to the full achievement of the NDR. Or, as the party has noted in its own internal documents under “tactics and strategy”, the “balance of forces at the time of our transition” required temporary compromises.
Some in the ANC have argued that the NDR is a throw back to the party’s revolutionary Marxism during the struggle against white minority rule in the heady 1960s and has no place in a modern democratic society. Such voices have lost the argument and the NDR, or what is now being called “the second transition”, promises to accelerate “transformation” and achieve the original vision through a new era of political radicalism, although guided by the tactical advances and retreats determined by the “balance of forces”. This provides ready explanation for the poisonous tone of politics in South Africa today and the increasingly adversarial relationship between the ruling party the media and, not least, artists.
When local alternative scene artist Brett Murray made his now famous painting The Spear depicting President Zuma in a compromising position and exhibited it at an art gallery in the upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Rosebank he and the gallery likely had no idea of the sulfurous conflict that would follow. What initially looked like a straight forward case of freedom of expression vs offended political authority gave the gallery and most independent media cause to assume they were on solid ground in resisting calls for The Spear—the name derives from the ANC’s military wing in exile, Umkhonto we Sizwe or Spear of the Nation—to be removed. Certainly the political strategy of President Zuma in suing for defamation looked like a PR disaster any elected leader would have done well to avoid. A painting whose appeal was initially restricted to a small leading edge art community was instantly catapulted to national and international notoriety. And in protesting that the painting depicted him as “a philander and womaniser” the president drew a great deal of attention to the evidence of just that.
More is known about the sexuality of Jacob Zuma than probably any other elected leader. A man with four polygamous marriages, two ex wives and 22 acknowledged children, including a love child with the daughter of a close friend, the president has had one high profile rape trial—of which he was acquitted—in addition to admitting publicly that he knowingly slept with an HIV positive woman but felt safe because he took a shower afterword. His defenders place his behaviour in the context of African culture and note that mistresses are married and all children—even out of wedlock—are acknowledged and cared for. The president, in other words, is not secretive or hypocritical about what he does.
The president was also politically sure-footed in choosing ground to fight on that initially looked like a catastrophe. The Spear controversy has, perversely, played to political and cultural strengths for the president. The independent media and the liberal arts community, which regard themselves as embattled defenders of transparency and democratic pluralism, but are regarded by the ruling party and large parts of the African majority as remnants of white power, found themselves in the firing line. Much African opinion was legitimately offended by the Murray painting, seeing it as vulgar—certainly true—disrespectful and even racist. In terms of the strategy and tactics of the NDR, winning this argument is one skirmish in a larger and longer battle for “transformation” that will end when the media and other centres of power are brought under ANC control and made “demographically representative”.
South Africa is both a western and an African country but it is culturally far more conservative and African than commonly assumed. The role of irreverent pop art as an accepted form of political satire is most definitely a western idea, as is the accepted reaction of western politicians on the receiving end of it.
When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was the subject of a painting by artist Margaret Sutherland in which he is portrayed lying naked on a coach with a dog at his feet, the only response, via twitter, came from his director of communications who stated:
We are not amused. Everyone knows the Prime Minister is a cat person.