Cartoonist Rights Network International, an organization that supports political cartoonists around the world who are at risk because of their work, established its first collegiate chapter at AU on Feb. 3 during a Kennedy Political Union event.
Anna Sczepanski, a sophomore in the School of Communication who is interning with CRNI this year, is the acting president of AU’s CRNI chapter. The chapter is aiming to help CRNI educate people about how limitations on freedom of speech are affecting political cartoonists and about what people can do to help.
| A conversation with Joel Pett and Robert RussellHOWIE PERLMAN / THE EAGLE |
Robert Russell, CRNI’s executive director, showcased the political cartoons of Jonathan Shapiro, also known as “Zapiro,” who works in South Africa. Russell said he feels Shapiro’s cartoons of Jacob Zuma, the president of both the Republic of South Africa and the country’s majority political party, the African National Congress, have been influential in shaping public opinion of Zuma.
Russell focused on cartoons Shapiro made during Zuma’s rape trial in 2006, which took place before he became president of the ANC in December 2007 and president of South Africa in May 2009. The cartoons often depicted Zuma with a showerhead on his scalp, poking fun at Zuma’s testimony during his trial that he took a shower after having sexual intercourse without a condom with the alleged rape victim to avoid contracting HIV.
Joel Pett, who earned the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and is the president of CRNI’s board of directors, talked with the KPU event’s audience about a Cameroonian cartoonist’s reaction to one of his works. After Pett showed him a piece in which he characterized retired General Norman Schwarzkopf as “war profiteering” from an autobiography he wrote after the 1991 Gulf War, Pett said the Cameroonian cartoonist asked him about what the U.S. military’s reaction to this was.
Pett told the KPU audience this question indicated how mindsets in countries with significant impediments to press freedoms differ from those in the U.S., where First Amendment freedoms of speech are highly regarded and authorities are not expected to lash out over cartoons.
“We have a tradition of [political satire] and it’s a tradition that is not going to die, it can’t be killed and it’s so deeply ingrained here that, in fact, you dare not protest against it,” Pett said in an interview with The Eagle before the KPU event.
Visit http://www.theeagleonline.com to check out the Eagle’s full exclusive interview with Pett and Russell.
You can reach this staff writer at hperlman@theeagleonline.com.
The Eagle co-sponsored this event with KPU.
