‘Vulgar’ painting enrages ANC
Anti-nato protesters face bomb charges
Cape Town – A new portrait of South African president Jacob Zuma, shown in the heroic style of Lenin but with his penis exposed, has been greeted with fury by the ruling African National Congress.
The work by Brett Murray, which is on display at the Goodman art gallery in Johannesburg and has been widely reprinted in the press, has hit a raw nerve. Zuma has been tried for rape – he was acquitted – and his sixth wedding took place last month.
The ANC elite is sensitive about the mockery that his polygamy has produced.
The ANC said the picture – entitled The Spear in a reference to the phallic image and to Spear of the Nation, the ANC’S emblem – was ‘‘distasteful and vulgar’’ and instructed its lawyers to make the gallery remove the work, destroy all promotional material and prevent the press from publishing it.
Murray, one of South Africa’s leading artists and sculptors, is a radical whose art often shocks.
He has been referred to by critic Brenda Atkinson as ‘‘the dark prince of South African pop art’’.
Lara Koseff, of the Goodman gallery, said: ‘‘We feel it is censorship to take the image down.’’
The newspapers that have printed the image say they will wait for a court verdict.
Zuma’s office said: ‘‘We are amazed at the crude and offensive manner in which this artist denigrates the person and the office of the president of the republic of South Africa.’’
It added that Zuma was an architect of the freedom of expression enshrined in the country’s laws, but that such rights were ‘‘not absolute’’.
‘‘Nobody has the right to violate the dignity and rights of others while exercising their own.’’
The picture, which has just been sold for NZ$21,500, was part of a collection entitled Hail to the Thief, ‘‘a very satirical look at contemporary South African politics’’, according to Koseff.
The controversy comes at a difficult time for Zuma, whose rule has become a byword for presidential inactivity amid a sea of sleaze and corruption.
He is hoping for another presidential nomination, a decision that will be made at the ANC conference in December.
Two members of his Cabinet, Tokyo Sexwale, the minister of human settlements, and Kgalema Montlanthe, the deputy president, are openly running against him.
Polls show that Zuma’s approval ratings have fallen by nine percentage points to 46 per cent since February, with an equal number disapproving of his leadership.
These are alarming figures for a man whose party regularly wins 65 per cent of the vote. Chicago – As Nato protesters marched by the hundreds to the house of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, three others were in court yesterday facing terrorism charges for allegedly planning to bomb the mayor’s residence, police stations and Obama’s campaign headquarters during the upcoming summit.
While the delegates from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation began to arrive, the three men who had been arrested in a raid last Thursday appeared before a Cook County judge, charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, possession of an explosive device and providing material support for terrorism.
The men, Occupy activists Brian Church, 20, of Florida, Jared Chase, 24, of New Hampshire, and Brent Vincent Betterly, 24, of Florida, are being held on $1.5 million bond.
Prosecutors alleged they had made molotov cocktails and discussed a host of other weapons, including swords and knives.
Police Superintendent Garry Mccarthy said police were responding to an ‘‘imminent threat’’.
Lawyers for the suspects disputed those claims.
‘‘There are a lot of sensational allegations being made,’’ said Kris Hermes, a volunteer lawyer from the National Lawyers Guild. ‘‘This is obviously an effort to chill dissent ahead of the Nato demonstrations.’’
Police said they made 13 other protest arrests during the week.
The suspects were arrested in a raid on a house in the Bridgeport neighbourhood, along with eight others who were detained but not charged.
Several hundred Occupiers who had descended from across the country for the week to agitate against the military-industrial complex turned their attention to Emanuel. Angry at the mayor’s decision to close six mental health clinics, they marched through the streets of Emanuel’s neighbourhood, chanting ‘‘Healthcare, not warfare’’.