Thursday, July 21, 2011

"UTTER" OR "GUTTER" DEPICTION? THAT IS THE QUESTION!






© 2011 Zapiro (All rights reserved)

Printed with permission from www.zapiro.com
For more Zapiro cartoons visit www.zapiro.com



A little-known organization (at least to Blogger), and an even less known Chief Executive Officer thereto, one Advocate Pheagane Solomon Moreroa, has re-ignited a CARTOON debate that I had thought had long been put to bed, if not to the test of lawyers and their courts and their sub-judice rules.  The last I checked, President Zuma had sued the cartoonist over similar depiction.


Now, it is a disturbing trend in South Africa... and I'm blogging today to try and stem that slimy tide...that while matters are still under consideration by lawyers and the courts, prominent individuals outside the judiciary continue to make comment patently in order to agitate the proverbial "masses of our people" and hence cow the judge handling the matter to find in favour of the whims of the "masses" in the propagandist's head!



I have with disgust seen this happening a lot to the detriment of courageous ANC Youth League Leader Julius Malema whereupon while the Johannesburg High Court (in whatever capacity it was standing in investigating alleged hate speech against Afrikaaners for his singing of a Zulu song "Dubul'Ibhunu"), one too many prominent persons was still making comment at the expense of Malema that "Dubul'IBhunu" translates into English as "[Kill the Boer Ethnic Group]", which of course, is lexicographical nonsense of the highest order for those of us like Blogger who not only boast sufficient smatterings of both the Zulu and English Languages, but have sung the song as freedom fighters in the past and still sing it yet our bosom friends to this days are Afrikaaners.


Methinks, there is a culture developing of sucking up to people and individuals with power or money or both for us to enjoy as individuals; then people come up with extraordinary penmanship or statements geared towards currying favour with those seen as the powerful of society.  We are in that sense growing into a nation of intellectual and administrative prostitutes who pay no regard to what is right, fair and noble, with our only sense of right being a maintenance of our attained individual positions and statuses.


I wish to quote: 


"It is culturally, religiously and linguistically unprecedented to 
attack each other on the basis of a forgiven past..."



What a pontification!



I wish to ask:


Whose culture are you referring to in that quote, Advocate Moreroa, if indeed you were quoted correctly?  


WHOSE RELIGION when the state is supposed to be SECULAR?      


Whose language when back around 1994 at the demise of Apartheid we nationally agreed English will be the country's operational language?"


On the contrary, Advocate, I suggest we South Africans get with speed to be as Engiish as we can in all manner of the word, including culturally BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN OUR NATIONAL CHOICE!  It is quite reprehensible that public representatives reap the benefits of being in a modern state crafted by such great nations as the French and the British in one moment....


...And the next moment, particularly when the Fourth Estate (which is part and parcel of what we inherited from Europe) quizzes or lampoons them, they tell us they are suddenly culturally-unBritish!


Just remember, Advocate, that the level of cartooning all over the world is too often regarded as the symbol for the depth of democracy.


As to whether the President (Zuma) together with his capable administration as cabinet needs your assistance in his fight with the media over this one is another story.  Personally I think he is a grown-up man who knows his way around court battles and out-of-court settlements... far better than me and you put together!  And that is why he is Our President---he EARNED it through the courts, remember?





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