Jonathan Shapiro [Zapiro] has been doing his best to prevent a government, at least, by his painful cartoons of President Jacob Zuma. One such showed Zuma with a shower attached to his head, when he made the alarmingly ignorant claims about showering reducing HIV risk.
In a semi-literate population, visual messages are all the more powerful. Many people are either unable or unwilling to read vast tracts of text, so a funny or scathing cartoon that puts across the core concepts could make the difference between a message remembered and a message lost.
Zuma still attained office, though, and Shapiro has decided to give Zuma a break for now to give “the presidency a chance to get going.” I’ll be keeping an eye on him.
