ANC orders cover-up over Zuma’s manhood
A new portrait of the 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 (ANC).
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 picture, 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 the 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 in a statement: ‘‘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 £10,290 (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 bad figures for a man whose party regularly wins 65 per cent of the vote.
‘‘The real point of the controversy,’’ said Sholto Cross, a sociologist and former ANC member, ‘‘is the collision between African culture and liberal constitutionalism, which was the price the ANC had to pay to get to power, and which protects freedom of expression. It’s always been an uneasy mix and incidents like this will test the constitution, the judges and their independence.’’