If there was ever an occasion to give thanks that we have a Bill of Rights it was on Tuesday when The Star published an attack on the Mail & Guardian by the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Kgositsile, under the headline: ”Poor taste must not pose as art.”
The article was confused, but appeared to be demanding not only the reintroduction of formal censorship of a kind we suffered under National Party rule — to ”deal” with pornography — but its application to newspapers as well as the broadcasting industry and its extension to the fine arts.
Ms Kgositsile’s outburst was seemingly prompted by the ”outrage” suffered by ”many black women” at the M&G’s review of the Martienssen Prize art exhibition, which included a photograph of the winning exhibit. The piece, entitled ”Useful Objects”, consists (in the words of the reviewer) of a half-smoked Gauloise Blonde cigarette in a ceramic ashtray ”resembling a black vagina, lips or a turd”.
The deputy speaker asks, rhetorically, whether the photograph was published ”because it depicted the private parts of a black woman and not those of a white woman, or man, or black man, for that matter.”
Declaring that ”people’s pride and dignity cannot be trampled on in the name of freedom of expression”, the article concludes: ”If need be, legislation must protect our people from degradation that is likely to continue in the name of trying to keep up with some arbitrary artistic ideals not set by the majority of those affected by these academic debates.”
The office of speaker is one that demands respect and it is unfortunate that it should be brought into disrepute by an outpouring of such arrant nonsense. The M&G published a photograph of the piece, because respected members of the artistic community judged it worthy of a prize.
The suggestion that we did so because the ”private parts” were black and female is worthy only of contempt. If Ms Kgositsile had only a modicum of artistic sense she would appreciate that ”Useful Objects” is an instance of freedom of expression being exercised in the defence, rather than in the destruction, of ”people’s pride and dignity”.
As for her suggestion that ”the majority” should be given responsibility for defining artistic ideals, we would only observe that it is unfortunate that the deputy speaker appears to have chosen Stalin for her muse.