Explore the ANC response of this artwork, The Spear (painting).
After a review and photo appeared in the City Press, Liza Essers, the owner and director of the Goodman Gallery, said that she received a telephone call from Mduduzi Mbata, special advisor to the minister of arts and culture, seeking to clarify her thoughts on the exhibition. She invited him to visit the gallery the following Tuesday.The ANC issued a press release on 17 May 2012 expressing outrage over the painting and saying it would apply to the High Court to have it removed. Attorneys representing the ANC and Zuma repeated the threat in an email sent to Essers the same day. The painting drew strong condemnation from ANC leaders and various religious groups, who found the painting "obscene" and "vulgar". A leader of the Nazareth Baptist Church called for the artist to be stoned to death. The ANC also demanded that the image be taken down from the City Press' website.  ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said of the painting, "The African National Congress is extremely disturbed and outraged by the distasteful and indecent manner in which Brett Murray and the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg is displaying the person of comrade President Jacob Zuma". Zuma responded to the artwork by saying that it painted him as "a philanderer and a womaniser".In response to the impending legal action, gallery spokesperson Lara Koseff said its lawyers had responded that it would stay until the show was over, citing censorship concerns as central to the decision to allow the exhibition to continue. The ANC Women's League has also demanded that the exhibition be halted, and all instances of the image be removed from the internet. Brett Murray said that his painting had not been intended maliciously, but as "an attempt at humorous satire of political power and patriarchy within the context of other artworks in the exhibition and within the broader context of South African discourse".In the first day of legal proceedings, the representative for the ANC, Gcina Malindi, began sobbing and was unable to proceed, causing the process to be adjourned and postponed and the television coverage of the event was suppressed. Later, the ANC sought to drop proceedings.
Gcina Malindi Johannesburg Goodman Gallery ANC Women's League African National Congress South African Brett Murray Jacob Zuma High Court