South Africa's most notorious cartoonist has a message for Jacob Zuma: Like it or not, the shower head is here to stay.
Jonathan Shapiro, known by his pen name, Zapiro, has infuriated the country's next president by repeatedly portraying him with a shower nozzle above his head, a scathing reference to the 2006 rape trial where Mr. Zuma testified that he took a shower to protect himself from AIDS after he had sex with an HIV-positive woman.
Mr. Zuma, who will be inaugurated as South Africa's new president next Saturday, has filed two lawsuits against the caustic cartoonist. Members of the ruling party have demanded that Zapiro be more respectful of their leader's dignity as he assumes the highest office in the land.
But in his latest cartoon, published in a Sunday newspaper, Zapiro defiantly sketched a shower nozzle above Mr. Zuma's head again. “Yes, he'll still have that shower,” the cartoonist vowed.
In a country where Mr. Zuma has a near-monopoly on power, where his ruling African National Congress has just recorded an overwhelming majority for the fourth consecutive election, fearless satirists such as Zapiro have emerged as the true opposition.
South Africa has a long tradition of biting satire. Political commentary here is sharper and more acerbic than almost anywhere else in the world. But many of Mr. Zuma's supporters are unhappy with the mocking portraits of their hero, and there is mounting pressure on the satirists to become a little more deferential.
It's a titanic battle: South Africa's powerful politicians pitted against its relentless satirists. And so far the mockers are not backing down.
Even the business sector has a tradition of political satire. One of the country's most popular fast-food chains, Nando's, often uses its advertising campaigns to poke fun at politicians. Last week Nando's broadcast a television commercial that lampooned the bombastic leader of the ANC youth league, Julius Malema. The youth league was outraged, calling it “disgusting” and “racist” and complaining that it “undermined” their leader.
When the league threatened to mobilize its members to take militant action against the fast-food chain, Nando's promised to remove the commercials within 24 hours. The league declared victory. Then the chain cheekily unveiled its new commercials: an identical version, except with the puppet's face blurred and his voice distorted.
Even as Mr. Zuma celebrated his election triumph last week, audiences were flocking to see a comedy at Johannesburg's venerable Market Theatre that ridiculed the ANC leader and his comrades.
The play, MacBeki, is a comic version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, making fun of Mr. Zuma and former president Thabo Mbeki for the backroom intrigues and betrayals that marked their rise to power. Audiences roar with laughter in a climactic scene when the character known as MacZum emerges on stage with a shower nozzle on his head.
The playwright, Pieter-Dirk Uys, has been lampooning South Africa's politicians since the apartheid era. But when he created a Jacob Zuma puppet that sprayed water on audiences from a Zapiro-style shower head, the ANC sent him a letter, complaining that it was “offensive.”
He shot back that the ANC's leader should be protecting freedom of speech, rather than filing lawsuits against cartoonists.
Another source of satire is the South African fake-news website, hayibo.com, which takes humorous jabs at Mr. Zuma's polygamy and other foibles. It features headlines such as “Zuma campaigning to gain two-thirds majority among his wives.”
But by far the most controversial satire in recent years was a Zapiro cartoon last year that accused Mr. Zuma of interfering in the judicial system during his corruption prosecution. It portrays the ANC leader unbuckling his pants and preparing to rape the metaphorical figure of Lady Justice, who is being held down by his political allies. “Go for it, boss!” they urge him.
