Tag: Jacob Zuma

Painting showing Zuma’s genitals provokes ANC

The ANC vowed on Thursday to go to court to get a painting of President Jacob Zuma with his genitals hanging out removed from a Johannesburg gallery.

“The African National Congress is extremely disturbed and outraged by the distasteful and indecent manner in which Brett Murray and the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg is displaying the person of comrade President Jacob Zuma,” ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said in a statement.

“We have this morning [Thursday] instructed our lawyers to approach our courts to compel [them] to remove the portrait from display as well as from their website and destroy all printed promotional material.”

The 1.85m-high acrylic on canvas painting titled “The Spear” is part of Murray’s “Hail to the Thief II” exhibition at the gallery.

It is part of a body of satirical work which is a sequel to his 2010 exhibition “Hail to the Thief”.

A biography of Murray handed out by the gallery shows how Murray’s work continues his forthright attacks on abuses of power.

His bronzes, etchings, paintings and silk-screens formed part of a “vitriolic and succinct censure of bad governance”.

They were Murray’s attempts to humorously expose the paucity of morals and greed within the ruling elite, according to the biography.

The painting of Zuma, and a few other pieces, have already been sold.

The ANC said the painting violated Zuma’s right to dignity.

It said the image and the dignity of the president as president of the ANC, president of the country, and as a human being had been dented by “this so-called piece of art”.

Staff at the Goodman Gallery said on Thursday that the exhibition, which opened on May 10, had been well received, with positive comments in the guest book.

“Hilariously sad and true,” wrote one person. Other comments were “brilliant”, “very cool” and “amazing”.

The gallery said it would make an official comment in response to the ANC’s threat of court action, but had not done so by Thursday evening.

The ANC also bemoaned the use of the party’s logo.

Part of Murray’s work was a poster of the ANC’s emblem with “for sale” printed on top of it and then “sold” stamped across it.

“The vulgar portrait and the dismembering of the ANC logo… is an abuse of freedom of artistic expression and an acute violation of our constitution, apart from being defamatory,” said Mthembu.

Murray also took struggle posters and adapted them to read: “Amandla, we demand Chivas, BMWs and bribes”; “Now you have touched the women you have struck a rock, you have dislodged a boulder; you will be president”; and “Tell my people that I love them and that they must continue the struggle for Chivas Regal, Mercs and Kick-backs”.

The exhibition runs until June 16.

Murray is Cape Town-based artist whose work is to be found in a number of South African and international galleries. – Sapa

Mulder rewriting history, say Young Communists

Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder is trying to rewrite history and suggest that settlers and colonialists found South Africa as a “house to let”, the Young Communist League of SA said on Sunday.

“The fact is that land was dispossessed violently and through bloodshed, and ultimately legislated in 1913, leaving Africans with no choice but to subject themselves to wage exploitation in the mining industry,” YCLSA secretary Buti Manamela said in a statement on its lekgotla.

“Such utterances are nothing but archaic white denialism and [it] will defeat the very process of land redistribution and land restitution.”

On Wednesday, Mulder suggested in Parliament that black “Bantu-speaking” people had no historical claim to 40 percent of the country.

“Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa,” he said during debate on President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address.

Zuma later warned Mulder to tread carefully on the emotive issue of land reform.

On Sunday, the YCLSA called for Mulder’s resignation as Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

“We do not believe that a person such as Pieter Mulder should serve in government, especially in his responsibility in Agriculture and Forestry,” said Manamela.

“We call for his immediate resignation as he does not share the overall objectives of government, or for the president to release him from his duties.”

However, Mulder — in his capacity as the leader of the Freedom Front Plus — reacted later on Sunday saying the league had twisted the comments he had made in Parliament.

“I referred in my speech to the historical acquisition of land. This argument is at present purposefully being presented in a twisted manner.”

He said his argument was that the Koi and the San were the first residents in Southern Africa. Thereafter groups from the North and from the South moved inland and forced the Koi and the San to dryer parts.

“These Northern and Southern groups can not lay claim to the whole land. I referred furthermore to food security and the problems that emotional slogans about land in the fulfilling of this task are causing,” he said.

In its statement, the YCLSA said concerns about the use of judicial institutions for political gain were also raised at its lekgotla.

“We support the proposed regulations for members of the judiciary to declare their business interests and benefits like all other public office bearers,” it said.

It would campaign for constitutional amendments to require the judiciary to be subjected to popular and democratic elections.

“If they serve the public, then the public must determine who should serve in such offices at all levels of the judicial system.”

The lekgotla also touched on the disciplinary hearing against suspended ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema and his executive.

“… In the movement, individuals come and go, but the movement remains no matter how big we believe we are in comparison to the movement,” he said.

In November, Malema and other youth league leaders were found guilty of bringing the ANC into disrepute and of sowing division within the party.

This was after they, among other things, made comments about regime change in Botswana.

They were suspended for periods ranging from 18 months to five years and unsuccessfully appealed against the sanctions. They are now presenting evidence in mitigation. – Sapa