Plenty of material for Zapiro’s caustic pen
Legendary cartoonist’s book ‘Dead President Walking’ sees the light
JONATHAN Shapiro is in a reflective mood. Sitting in a garden tea room in Joburg’s northern suburbs this week to speak about his 21st consecutive annual collection, Dead President Walking, the legendary South African cartoonist better known as Zapiro pulls no punches.
“I don’t believe in this notion of the importance of impartiality, I don’t do objectivity or balance, I do advocacy… that’s why I don’t do cartoons that don’t take risks.
“The essential aspect about cartooning is communicating ideas and opinions, which is why great cartoons capture the element of surprise. Humour is about surprise too. It’s not the only tool, but it’s certainly the most important.”
A self-proclaimed secular humanist, Zapiro has been drawing since the 1980s.
Never a trained journalist, he was a graphic activist in the fight against apartheid.
His inauspicious beginning was getting the erstwhile Weekly Mail to publish two of his cartoons on spec – for free.
He still draws weekly for its successor the Mail & Guard- ian, the Sunday Times and its daily iteration, The Times. For a while he drew for papers at Independent Media, publishers of Saturday Star, too.
In the process he’s picked up two honorary doctorates, won almost every major award in South African journalism – several times – and been lauded from one side of the world to the other, including being named one of the world’s top 10 cartoonists.
He’s managed to offend almost every si ngle i nterest group in the country; from organised religion to politicians, sporting icons and business leaders and he’s often become part of the news himself, especially when he picked up an eye-watering defamation suit claiming R5 million from President Jacob Zuma himself.
It’s Zuma who finds himself the focus of this year’s collection, as he has been for six of the past 21 annuals, but to consider Zapiro fixated on Zuma and indeed politics would be to limit the man, some of his best work has involved sports. His salutes to rugby great Jonah Lomu and music icon David Bowie in this year’s collection are as poignant as they are unforgettable. It’s something Zapiro prides himself on.
“I love the way (cartoons) live on, they get scanned and sent to friends, they get cut out and stuck on fridge doors, they live on as questions in history exams, in books. I love the way they live on in other incarnations.” As he says this he unpacks a box of three of his most famous creations – re-imagined as figurines.
They’re dubbed the heroes and villains set and there are three, beginning with Madiba, followed by Zuma with the shower head that Zapiro anointed him with, and then Juju – Julius Malema in full demagogue mode, complete with red Teletubby overall and matching beret.
The final figurine, to be launched soon, will by the Arch, Desmond Tutu – all laughs and benevolence – completing the series. But politics remains his bread and butter.
Zapiro’s motivated by moral outrage and there has been much this year to feed just that. His cartoon of the Hawks arresting Pravin Gordhan while the president loots the state coffers in the foreground has been viewed 2.2 million times.
“(Celebrated satirist) Pieter-Dirk Uys once said my cartoons draw themselves, alluding to the wealth of material we have in this country.
“But they don’t, as a cartoonist you always have to stay one step ahead of the process, using hyperbole and hypothesis to galvanise people… it’s exhausting.
“Believe it or not, I wish my job was harder, I wish the president wasn’t so easy, I wish we had less material – and rather have the country working better as a result.”
Zapiro’s Dead President Walking is on sale countrywide or can be ordered at www. zapiro.com. His figurines are available for sale at leading book stores and through his website.