Cape Town - The ANC has slammed a new painting of President Jacob Zuma with his genitals exposed called Umshini Wam (Weapon of Mass Destruction).
ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said they condemned the painting in the strongest terms.
“Any portrayal of President Zuma in this way is disrespectful. It makes a mockery of the president’s office, his status as a father and a husband, and is an absolute abuse of the arts.”
Referencing Brett Murray’s The Spear, Joyce Witbooi, the ANC’s provincial spokeswoman for arts and culture said: “It is now old hat and a lame tactic.”
Dunoon-based artist Ayanda Mabulu has denied that he was jumping on the bandwagon created by The Spear.
He told the Cape Argus on Tuesday that Zuma was a “shell with a colonial master dancing inside” and he threatened to paste images of the painting “on every street corner” in Cape Town if the media “assist in censorship” by not republishing his artwork in full.
The painting went on exhibition at the AVA Gallery on Monday night.
Umshini Wam, which shows Zuma dancing in traditional Zulu garb with his genitals hanging out, forms part of the Our Fathers exhibition which will be at the gallery until September 21.
Mabulu says the painting addresses Zuma respectfully (as an elder and a traditionally circumcised man), yet confronts him with a serious question: “I respectfully, as one of his children, ask my father [Zuma] why he is starving us.”
Mabulu says he and Murray came from completely different backgrounds.
“For myself, I can say that I live in a township and I see everyday what the conditions under which people suffer. As an artist you can’t sit around drinking coffee when the leaders in the ANC are starving your people. You need to make a bold statement,” he said.
“[Besides], I have drawn penises for most of my life.”
Kirsty Cockerill, the co-curator of the exhibition agrees.
“There are more things that set [Murray’s and Mabulu’s] works apart, than there are things that they have in common.”
In a 2010 painting titled Ngcono ihlwempu kunesibhanxo sesityebi (Better poor than a rich puppet), Mabulu depicted various international leaders, including Zuma, in the nude.
At the time the painting received limited critical attention, but was brought back into the limelight in the wake of the controversy caused by Murray’s The Spear.
In the ANC’s response to the latest painting, the words of secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, who reprimanded Murray earlier this year, seem out of sync.
“If [Mabulu] wants to be in a [beauty] contest [of derogatory gestures], let him,” Mantashe said.
Mantashe failed to respond to questions as to why he was responding to Mabulu’s painting with less scorn than Murray’s.
Cobus Grobler, ANC caucus spokesman in the provincial legislature, said: “Remember that reactions to Murray’s painting only gained momentum after a week or two.
“It can’t be said that people are treating this artwork differently – the news of this latest painting just broke.”
Cape Argus