There was ”bewilderment and disbelief” when Mail & Guardian cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, alias Zapiro, heard that he had been chosen as this year’s principal Prince Claus laureate in The Netherlands, with prize money of €100 000 (almost R800 000).
”I am not quite sure what I felt when I heard the news. Bewilderment and disbelief, I think. It came out of the blue!” Shapiro told the Mail & Guardian Online on Friday while chasing his new puppy around the house. ”I got a phone call from Holland five weeks ago and I couldn’t figure out what I was being told. And I had to keep it a secret.”
Shapiro’s cartoons appear weekly in the M&G and daily on the M&G Online. He also produces cartoons for the Sunday Times and the Sowetan.
Since 1997, the Prince Claus Fund annually honours artists, thinkers and cultural organisations and aims to ”increase cultural awareness and promote exchange between culture and development”, according to its website.
The fund ”initiates and supports artistic and intellectual quality, creates platforms for debate and stimulates creative processes and artistic productions”. This year’s theme was humour and satire.
”I kind of heard about [these awards] before, but I didn’t know much about it. Seeing the extensive research they do all over the world and the incredible people and organisations they found, that is amazing,” said Shapiro.
He is awarded in recognition of his role in ”stimulating social and cultural development”, says the fund’s website, because his cartoons ”scrutinise the current social and political realities of South Africa, the African continent and the global arena”.
”With the kind of thought I put in my cartoons and with the progressive agendas I’ve tried to follow while being involved in different organisations, I contribute to the debate and the kind of thinking that chances things,” says Shapiro. ”But it is hard to say, since cause and effect are hard to detect, but I can certainly help the process.”
Shapiro will receive his award at a ceremony in Amsterdam on December 7.
Another 10 laureates will each receive a price of €25 000 (almost R200 000). Five of the laureates are from Africa: Egyptian Lenin El-Ramly, writer of a number of popular TV series, experimental theatre, plays and movies; stand-up comedian Edgar Langeveldt, from Zimbabwe; painter of popular Congolese traditional paintings Chéri Samba; Abdul Sheriff, from Tanzania, who created the Museum for History and Culture in Zanzibar; and choreographer and dancer Opiyo Okach from Kenya.
The other laureates are Indonesian puppet master Slamet Gundono; Armenian actor, singer and comedian Michael Poghosian; cartoonist Joaquin Salvador Lavado from Argentina; Iranian satirist Ibrahim Nabavi; and Brazilian professor of archaeology Niède Guidon.
The Prince Claus Fund works with individuals and organisations mainly in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to promote intercultural exchange as well as activities and publications reflecting a contemporary approach to culture and development.
On the net
M&G Online Zapiro homepage