TV channel pulls plug on cartoon lampooning Zuma

A CARTOON parodying President Jacob Zuma's stay in hospital has been rejected by eNews Channel Africa (eNCA) for being insensitive to the president's ill- health, cartoonist Jeremy Nell, better known as Jerm, said.

In the cartoon, Zuma is being examined by a doctor who says, "You're just light-headed from the last five years of spinning". The doctor holds a clipboard which reads, "Service delivery strikes, mines, Nkandla".

"I am a bit disappointed. I think there is a lot of cautiousness in the media after the outrage to the Eye Witness News [congress of clowns] cartoon."

Eye Witness News apologised in May after publishing on its website the cartoon depicting newly elected ministers and their voters as groups of clowns, with the latter accompanied by the label, "we the poephols".

The cartoon drew widespread condemnation from the ANC and its supporters, who called it racist and insulting and held a march protesting against it.

Since then, media companies had been "erring on the side of caution", Nel said.

Speaking about his cartoon, Freedom of Expression Institute executive director Phenyo Butale said: "I think eNCA did not want to have to deal with accusations of racism and find themselvesbeing forced to apologise.

"The protests against cartoons that have been labelled as racist, the marches to certain media houses, as well as the ANC complaint to the SA Human Rights Commission could have led to this kind of self-censorship by media houses."

Butale said the only limits to expression that should be recognised were those defined in the constitution.

"I definitely think the rejection of Jerm's cartoon is a breach to freedom of expression, in that it connotes that there is a limit to the degree to which people can express themselves," he said.

eNCA group editor Ben Said took a different stance: "I do not think any US media company would think it okay to poke fun at [Barack] Obama if he were ill, so why should it be OK here?

Butale said these rejections would lead to self-censorship by media houses wanting to avoid being called racist and threatened free speech and media freedom. - Jean Huisman