BOOK REVIEW: Zapiro’s scathing simplicity cuts to the bone
Satirist’s latest two books include a personal element about the Jacob Zuma disaster — the former president’s attempts to sue him
SA'sbest-known cartoonist, Zapiro, has just published two fresh compilations, WTF: Capturing Zuma — a cartoonist’s tale, documenting his coverage of the rise and fall of Zuma from 1997 to early 2018, and Let the Sunshine In, which catalogues the year from October 2017. Read together, WTF: Capturing Zuma — a cartoonist’s tale is more compelling. Zapiro has written accompanying text narrations to the cartoons, explaining his take on the context of events or clarifying the concept’s rationale. “Beyond the big political issues, it’s a story which weaves in my own smaller story,” he says.
And Zapiro’s stories are interesting, often intriguing. Most notably so in covering the background to, and the unravelling of, the two lawsuits brought against him by former president Jacob Zuma. The first, in 2006, claiming R15m for impugning Zuma’s dignity in three pieces satirising Zuma’s behaviour and testimony during his rape trial, represented an unwanted world record against a cartoonist. “...
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