In the afternoon came another ANC press release, this one entitled "ANC calls on all South Africans to defend the President", and more reminiscent of a call to arms from the ailing Muammar Gaddafi than a spat over the latest Damien Hirst. But on Wednesday the Times of South Africa devoted its front page to photos of the young Murray wearing an ANC T-shirt and examples of his anti-apartheid artwork, under the sarcastic headline: "Murray, the 'racist'". Murray is white and from Cape Town, often portrayed as the country's last bastion of white privilege. A church leader demanded that Murray be "stoned to death" for insulting African culture. "We have not outgrown racism in our 18 years ," he said. The ANC secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, argued that the painting proved black people were still regarded as objects in South Africa. Zuma said he "felt personally offended and violated". The party that in the past remained silent in the face of corruption, its own people dying from Aids and human rights violations in Zimbabwe, just could not shut up about this crime against humanity. It was rather what one international correspondent, quoting Philip Larkin, referred to as those "tuberous cock and balls". It was not that The Spear shows Zuma mimicking the pose of Vladimir Lenin in a Soviet-era propaganda poster that riled the ANC.
The message read: "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 outraged by Brett Murray's depiction of President Jacob Zuma," announced the subject heading. There would be a furore, no doubt, but nothing on the scale of the rambunctious blitzkrieg that has hogged headlines for the past week in South Africa, where an image of president Jacob Zuma with exposed penis has earned that inexhaustible accolade "painting gate".Īlong with about 99% of people in the country, I learned about Brett Murray's artwork, The Spear, not from visiting the Goodman gallery in Johannesburg or reading about it in the arts pages, but from a press release issued by the governing African National Congress.
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