Slide Show: South African Political Cartoonist Zapiro

Jonathan Shapiro, (Zapiro) born in Cape Town, South Africa, fulfilled his military requirement before becoming active in the anti-apartheid movement, the United Democratic Front. In 1988, on a Fulbright scholarship, he studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City with premier comic artists Art Spiegelman and Harvey Kurtzman.

Today Zapiro is a noted editorial cartoonist with a busy schedule drawing for South Africa’s Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times.

He has published 16 book compilations of his work and received the 2007 Courage in Editorial Cartooning award from the Cartoonists Rights Network International, which monitors and supports the well-being of political cartoonists who find themselves in trouble because of the power and influence of their professional work. For several years, he’s been an invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
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According to the Daily Maverick, “He didn’t censor himself before the apartheid government (and he was jailed for it), he doesn’t censor himself to appease big business, and he certainly doesn’t censor himself to please the African National Congress—he is one of those who takes most seriously Section 16 of the South African constitution, the part where freedom of expression is enshrined.”

Read an interview with Zapiro and other persecuted cartoonists in Sampsonia Way.