Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

As in Russia and China, there is an ongoing problem of censorship. In 2012, the ANC sought to censor a painting by artist Brett Murray of polygamist president Jacob Zuma as Lenin with his penis exposed; it was a reproof of corruption in South African government. In an ANC official statement, Jackson Mthembu announced, “We have this morning instructed our lawyers to approach our courts to compel Brett Murray and Goodman Gallery to remove the portrait from display as well as from their website and destroy all printed promotional material. . . . It is in our view and we remain steadfast in that the image and the dignity of our President as both President of the ANC, President of the Republic, and as a human being has been dented by this so-called piece of art by Brett Murray at Goodman Gallery. We are also of the view that this distasteful depiction of the President has violated his individual right to dignity as contained in the constitution of our country.” Zuma supporters soon entered the gallery and smeared paint all over the image, effectively destroying it. The leader of the Shembe Church, which has millions of congregants, ordered that Murray be stoned to death. Steven Friedman, the white director of the Center for the Study of Democracy in Johannesburg and a columnist for Business Day, wrote that Murray’s painting was regarded by many black people “as yet another example of the contempt in which they believe they are held by white people.” In contrast, Aubrey Masango, a black writer for the Daily Maverick, worried that South Africa’s rulers “will hijack misinformed ideas of cultural identity and manipulate the real economic discomfort of the masses to generate sympathy.” Jonathan Jansen, the black vice chancellor of the University of the Free State, wrote, “I cannot think of a more necessary dialogue that must take place than between these two hard-line positions, but this being South Africa, heat overcomes light. Both corners in their rigid self-righteousness boxed the living daylights out of each other as they came flying out of their corners in this bloody fight.” A decision by the Film and Publication Board to “classify” the painting as offensive and potentially harmful to children was ultimately overturned.

In 2013, controversy erupted over the removal from the Joburg Art Fair of a painting by Ayanda Mabulu depicting President Jacob Zuma in a manner that the curators thought might offend the fair’s sponsors. Explaining his reasoning, the event organizer acknowledged that the decision was provoked by concern over the ability of the fair to attract future financial support: “I felt that the art fair has a responsibility to the creative economy and the painting could compromise that.” The painting was reinstated after photographer David Goldblatt, the fair’s featured artist for that year, threatened to quit in protest. Mabulu said, “It’s not the first time that I’ve been censored. I find it difficult to witness the same thing that was happening during the apartheid era happening today. It makes it difficult to understand in which direction we are going as South Africans, and artists, if we are going to allow the minority, two people, to decide what’s palatable for you people.”

Controversy subsequently arose over the appointment of two white curators for the South African Pavilion of the 2015 Venice Biennale and over their selection of only three women out of thirteen exhibiting artists, including only one black woman. Stefanie Jason of the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian noted, “Can a country whose reputation of butchering foreigners is being streamed around the world afford the further embarrassment of a pavilion in crisis?”

USA

Vlady’s Conquests

New Republic, June 1994

Vladimir Zhirinovsky is founder and leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, and served as vice chairman of the State Duma, or the lower house of parliament, until 2011. The BBC called him “a showman of Russian politics, blending populist and nationalist rhetoric, anti-Western invective, and a brash, confrontational style.” Howard Amos, writing in the Guardian, called him a “nationalist firebrand.” A flamboyant, belligerent, crude, obstreperous, inflammatory, racist, sexist, homophobic, authoritarian buffoon, he has grown no more appealing in the two decades since I wrote this piece.

At a recent party in New York with various members of the Moscow intelligentsia, the topic of conversation was, of course, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. I was surprised to find that members of that liberal circle who had first championed Gorbachev spoke of Zhirinovsky with the sort of good-humored affection that so many Americans seemed to have for Ollie North in his heyday. “You know,” said one, “he’s just a cynic. Everyone in Moscow is a cynic. Everyone in New York is a cynic. It’s not such an interesting problem.”