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Zapiro: The Work of a Political Cartoonist in South Africa—Caricature, Complexity, and Comedy in a Climate of Contestation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2007
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Jonathan Shapiro, better known as Zapiro, is South Africa's most influential and widely published political cartoonist. His work is featured in several national daily and weekly newspapers. His cartoons have also appeared in international publications and he or his work has been featured in everything from highbrow newspapers to the front page of real estate advertisement magazines. A member of the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, he exhibits a bias toward a progressive, Left-liberal conception of what political life ought to be that sits uncomfortably with the increasingly Africanist tonality pulsating through the veins of South African political life. His work touches upon the history of oppression, the reactions of those in and now out of power, and, in more recent years, on the issues that arise from the “underbelly” of the liberation movement. He has brutally caricatured the foibles of liberation movements leaders, be it their AIDS denial, individuals' cases of corruption, or the hypocrisy of ethnic or racial mobilization in the context of the new, non-racial dispensation. His particular wrath is reserved for African National Congress (ANC) figures who have, in his view, defiled the principles of the liberation movement. In the last two years, Zapiro has busied himself with a series of cartoons about the trials and tribulations of the former deputy president and leader of the ANC, Jacob Zuma.
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- SYMPOSIUM—GLOBAL POLITICS
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- © 2007 The American Political Science Association
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