Cartoonist Zapiro on South Africa Secrecy Bill

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with South African satirist and political cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, known as Zapiro, about a controversial “Protection of State Information Bill” which the South African parliament passed yesterday.

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Marco Werman: Journalists in South Africa are feeling like it just got harder to do their jobs. Yesterday South Africa’s Parliament passed a Protection of Information Act. The measure would make it easier for the government to protect secrets and punish those who unearth them. Critics say the bill would also make it easy to hide government corruption. Jonathan Shapiro, known by his pen name of Zapiro, is a satirist cartoonist and a former anti-apartheid activist. He says the bill reminds many South Africans of the draconian laws of the apartheid era.

Jonathon Shapiro: It’s being referred to by most activists and by a lot of civil society and by the media as The Secrecy Bill because although it is officially The Protection of Information Bill, many of us see it as doing exactly the opposite. It’s not protecting information for the good of the public, which is the way the ANC is spinning it. It’s really protecting the government and the ANC and potential wrongdoers in official situations from scrutiny because there’s no public interest defense clause, so you cannot claim, if you have information in your possession or if you publish it, you can’t claim it is in the public good, even if it clearly is. And the second thing is, massively punitive fines and even big jail terms for disclosing state secrets.

Werman: Now you’ve been cartooning and lampooning about this proposed law for months now. Tell us about one of the cartoons that’s really stinging.

Shapiro: Well, the two that I’ve just done over the past two days are really about what we’re calling Black Tuesday. It’s a day that refers to an apartheid era day called Black Wednesday. But the bill got passed on a Tuesday, and so we call it Black Tuesday. And the cartoon I’ve done is, the word “democracy”. it’s being painted out, being blacked out by Jacob Zumer, representing the ANC, and representing government and he’s got a can of paint, of secrecy. It’s a very simple cartoon but he’s blacking out the word democracy. Just sort of whistling while he does it. And then today’s cartoon was taking that even further and almost everything is blacked out and he just said, “Hmm, missed a spot” and he’s now about to black out even the signature and the date and everything.

Werman: Mm. Mm.

Shapiro: But there is one other one that I did a while back, which is much more controversial, and that is where you have the figure of Lady Justice lying on the ground, looking very, in a very bad state, and in fact, her clothes are torn and clearly it looks as if she may have been raped. And that is the inference in the cartoon. And she is saying to another figure, Lady Press Freedom, with her torch, in fact Free Speech, who’s being held by a person representing the ANC and looks as if she’s about to be raped by Jacob Zumer. Lady Justice is saying, “Fight sister, fight.” In other words, don’t let what happened to me happen to you, because we have had ravages on the justice system and on press freedom by the ANC, which is the very organization that brought in the freedoms that we have.

Werman: As a cartoonist, could this so call Secrecy Law actually affect the way you work?

Shapiro: I don’t see that the Secrecy Bill, or the Secrecy Act and when it becomes a law, it’ll be called an Act. I don’t see that as being specifically targeting people like cartoonist, satirists, and commentators. It effectively messes up the whole of society because we won’t know. The people at the sharp end of this are the investigative journalists, the whistleblowers, the editors, and people in the general public who need to get secrets out. So not so much the commentators, but they have another initiative called the Media Appeals Tribunal. That’s happening very soon as well and that will affect both information and criticism. And that will certainly affect cartoonists and satirists. So it’s kind of a two pronged attack on free speech. That really is reminiscent of draconian apartheid era laws.

Werman: Mm. You now, the impression in the United States is that the African National Congress, I think, widely is still the party of the rainbow nation and Nelson Mandela. Does the ANC unanimously support these laws and, if so, what has the ANC become then.

Shapiro: Well, I first want to challenge that perception that people have. For those of us who were part of the movement and who have spent many years fighting for what the movement and what the ANC fighting for, and supporting the ANC, many of us are enormously disillusioned. The people who fought and spent time in jail, I personally was detained without trial. That means kept in solitary confinement and I was arrested a few times and all of that. Many people like myself, who are absolutely disgusted by the current ANC. It feels not like the movement that we fought for. So I just want to really challenge that. I would like people in the United States to realize just how disillusioned we are. We’re looking at it like what’s happening in Cairo, in Egypt. That’s just a faster process. But unless the ANC turns around, this is not the movement we fought for.

Werman: What will happen to this bill? Because it was passed by Parliament yesterday. What do you think the chances are that it’ll go through?

Shapiro: I think that the chances that it will go through initially are extremely good now, which is a great pity. But I believe that it will then be stopped by the Constitutional Court and sent back to the drawing board. And everybody is realizing the next stop now will be the court challenges and I think everyone’s queuing up to challenge this.

Werman: South African political cartoonist Zapiro speaking to us from Cape Town. Thank you so much for speaking.

Shapiro: Thanks for, Thank you.

Werman: You can see some of Zapiro’s cartoons on the threat to press freedom in South Africa. We have a slide show at theworld.org.

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• Cartoonists from across South Africa are protesting their government’s new secrecy bill. Here’s a gallery of the cartoons they’ve created. The cartoon protest is hosted by Africartoons.
• Follow Zapiro on Twitter @zapiro
• Zapiro’s website
• Follow Global Cartoons on Twitter @globalcartoons
• Find Global Cartoons on Facebook