*This is the third in a series of dispatches from Cape Town, South Africa, where five USC Annenberg students are working as interns for eight weeks. Journalism professor Erna Smith serves as a faculty advisor for the team, which will work for news publications and a diplomatic organization. This post explores one student’s interpretation of the complex symbolism behind a controversial artwork making headlines in Cape Town this summer.*

On May 10, the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg opened an exhibition by artist Brett Murray entitled “Hail to the Thief II.”

It included a painting called “The Spear,” which depicted South African President Jacob Zuma as a latter-day Vladimir Lenin with his penis exposed to represent his “screwing” of the people of the South Africa. The controversial painting was eventually removed after two men turned up independently to deface the portrait, but not before it provoked President Zuma to bring a case against both the Goodman Gallery the City Press newspaper and for his ruling African National Congress to call for a boycott of the City Press. In the case heard by the South Gauteng High Court, President Zuma sought to have the painting removed from the gallery and images of it deleted from the City Press web site on the grounds that it violated his constitutional right to dignity and equality. (The case was withdrawn after the vandalized painting was removed and the City Press agreed to remove images of the painting from its web site in, as its editor Ferial Haffajee wrote, “the spirit of peacemaking.”)

The furor over “The Spear” has dominated the news for much of our time in Cape Town, and my classmates and I weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Initially, I saw it as an issue of freedom of expression and thought President Zuma, who denounced the painting as “racist,” was exploiting the situation for political gain. But it’s a bit more complicated when one takes into account the differences between the South African and U.S. constitutions and, more importantly, the country’s ugly racial past that continues to permeate every facet of life here. The South African constitution is widely considered one of the most progressive in the world and draws heavily on those in Canada and the European Union. Like those counties, South African constitution places more limits on speech and expression than the U.S. constitution does. This is particularly true of speech that is thought to advocate hatred and violence. In America, we make a distinction between speech and action. Thus, we have laws against hate crimes but not necessarily hate speech. In South Africa, it’s the opposite.

Given South Africa’s racial and discriminatory history, this makes sense. Many here have first-hand knowledge of the relationship between hateful words and hateful actions and bear the emotional scars to prove it. So, although the right to free speech and expression is guaranteed in the constitution, the right does not extend to a) propaganda for war, b) incitement of imminent violence, c) advocacy of hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that causes incitement to cause harm. Also, unlike the U.S., freedom of speech and expression is not held to be the most important individual right. Whereas the U.S. constitution enshrines these rights in the First Amendment, the South African Bill of Rights places equality, dignity and life as the first, second and third most important rights. In South Africa, where until 1994 the majority of residents had been systematically disenfranchised and brutalized for centuries, this prioritization of rights makes sense. But even after knowing this, I could not help but wonder: How does one legally define dignity, especially as it pertains to President Zuma who has a well-documented history of personal behavior that could be called, at best, undignified. Prior to his election in 2009, he was accused and acquitted of rape and narrowly escaped trial on corruption and racketeering charges. Since taking office, the president, who is a polygamist, has acknowledged fathering a child—his 20th--out of wedlock in a country with one of the highest rates of HIV infection rates in the world.

For these reasons, I am inclined to agree with the daughter of the late Oliver Tambo, the revered ANC leader, who wrote shortly after the furor began: “This portrait is what (Zuma) inspired.”