A dangerous path to tread

SOUTH Africa is sitting on the cusp of another art outrage, this time of the naked figure of President Jacob Zuma ostensibly anally raping former president Nelson Mandela. The painting by Ayanda Mabulu, a self-styled enfant terrible of the art world, follows his depiction almost a year ago of Zuma licking Atul Gupta’s sphincter in the cockpit of an aircraft with an ANC flag behind the co-pilot’s seat.

This is not the first time Zuma has been depicted nude or involved in some sexual act or another. Few will forget Cape Town-based artist Brett Murray’s 2012 depiction of him, genitals exposed, in a parody of Viktor Semyonovich Ivanov’s portrait of Lenin.

The ANC and its alliance marched on the gallery to show their disgust at the disrespect showed to the president. Now, paintings and graphic art showing Zuma in far worse situations, far more demeaning – and indeed actionable – pass almost without comment.

The same trajectory can be seen with cartoonist Zapiro and his drawings of the president raping justice which then transmogrify into Atul Gupta raping the country as Zuma zips up. The intention of the works is the same: to comment about the state of the country and the artists’ revulsion at what they see. This is all well and good and an exercise of our constitutionally enshrined freedom of expression but we might ask, is it art? If yes, is it in the best of taste? Is it just expedience?

All this ignores the broader societal issue. We don’t have any outcry at all about the normalisation, in fact, trivialisation of rape in a country where sexual assault is so pervasive. This is a dangerous path to tread. Freedom of expression is not untrammelled, it never can be. Rape is an outrage, it must always be.