Mail & Guardian cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro – better known as Zapiro – is this year’s winner of the Cartoonist’s Rights Network International’s (CRNI) Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award.
The gong is handed out to a cartoonist who chooses to ”express truth to power”, despite being ”threatened by terrorists, government officials or affiliated goon squads” – an experience many cartoonists find ”intimidating and traumatising”.
CRNI notes that two of Zapiro’s three cartoons of ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma are cited in a R15-million defamation suit that Zuma has brought against the cartoonist, his editors and South African publishers.
Zapiro, a recent winner of the Mondi South African Journalist of the Year award, has also received late-night telephone threats over other hard-hitting cartoons.
CRNI pays tribute to Zapiro for continuing to draw cartoons about both Zuma and the lawsuit despite the legal threat.
Zapiro has been a political cartoonist for more than two decades. He was detained without trial for his anti-apartheid activities in the 1980s and has been threatened by government officials in post-apartheid South Africa.
Previous winners of the award include Ali Dilem of Algeria, Musa Kart of Turkey, the 12 Danish cartoonists who drew images of the prophet Mohommed that sparked an outcry in the Muslim world, and Zimbabwe’s leading cartoonist, Tony Namate.