David Bullard: Zapped by Zapiro!

The intrepid Karabo Kgoleng, host of SAFM’s Sunday book show, found herself in the somewhat scary position of moderating the FLF panel with the greatest potential for fireworks yesterday afternoon. David Bullard, looking more bearish than bullish in the wake of his recent Sunday Times comeuppance, a vocal and irate Zapiro and the phlegmatic Mike van Graan prepared to toss around the question of the limits of freedom of speech. Festival organisers moved the event in order to accommodate the throngs wishing to see their favourite - and favourite love-to-hate - public commentators thrashing it out.

“How far does our responsibility as journalists and individual writers go when we criticise the powers that be in a democratic state?” asked Kgoleng opening the proceedings after reading the riot act, urging all present towards respectful behaviour. She succeeded, mostly, in keeping order, despite the mood that ran high. “Freedom of expression comes with responsibility,” she said. “But what does this ultimately entail?”

“It entails an editor that bothers to read his own newspaper,” said Bullard, who wrote his Out to Lunch column for fourteen years before getting the sack. “The Sunday Times benefited hugely over the last many years because the column stirred up debate. It brought in revenue. You submit on Wednesday morning for Friday’s print deadline. You assume somebody has read the column before the newspaper goes to bed. Some 691 times this was so. The 692nd time, the oxygen mask did not drop.”

Was his final column any worse than those that had gone before? Bullard thought not. “Why did nobody red flag it or refer it to the editor? Somebody put it on the page and four days later I got sacked. I assume a basic level of reader intelligence. I can’t be responsible for morons,” he said.

“I have never heard such a cop out in my life,” said a suitably indignant Zapiro who was at pains to assert that while some readers only bought the Sunday Times because of Bullard and Zapiro, he saw himself as coming from a vastly differently place. “How can you say, ‘It’s everybody else’s responsibility for my mistake’ - ? I am a freedom of expression junkie, but if you do something like this, you have to take responsibility for it.”

He referred to the Danish cartoons that stirred up the Islamic community globally a couple of years ago and said that freedom of expression was curtailed when an outside body refused permission for a journal to publish criticism. Not when a newspaper accidentally published racist cant because the sub-editors weren’t on top of the job. “That column was appalling. You have to live with it,” said Zapiro.

“My point,” said Bullard, “is that the failsafe at the paper didn’t work. In print media, there are checks and balances. It is inexcusable that nobody found this repulsive before going to print as it was later found to be.”

Mike van Graan, who has recently been in Holland, observed that at the previous FLF he and Zapiro were on a panel defending freedom of expression. “We were commenting on the closure of the political space as we perceived it at the time and the increasing political correctness that lead to self censorship. This asks the question of us what freedom of expression is. It is not an absolute. Every day we engage in forms of self-censorship for the sake of maintaining relationships and careers. Suppressing this right always happens within a certain context.”

He cited a dilemma faced by Dutch arts administrators - an Iranian woman’s exhibition exposing homophobia in Islamic society led to the museum being threatened by offended Muslims. They asked her to remove the images but she declined. “Under such circumstances, freedom of expression has life and death consequences. Anybody has a right to make a cartoon about the Prophet but there’s a broader context - the greater collective good vs. the individual - in which we exercise that right.”

Karabo Kgoleng said, “If we look at criticism as an insult, as a breach of human rights, where do we draw that line? The point of the column is to push boundaries, make enemies, to upset people and make them think.”

Bullard, who went on air at Yfm shortly after the event, said, “I was terrified. After being roasted by Noelene on 3-Talk, I was surprised at the reaction from the younger generation. They were more tolerant, seeming to think that I should have been yellow-carded. Out to Lunch was like a Led Zepellin concert. We smash up the instruments. If you want anodyne, then go for Max DuPreez. This debate has dominated the paper for five weeks. What more discussion could it have stirred?”

Zapiro challenged Bullard: “The definition of hate speech is unclear. We all have to think about what we do. The line is blurred, but one has to make a connection between what one person says, or writes or draws, and what somebody else does. It’s not how hard you criticise, but the perspective you come from.”

Zapiro reiterated that he was not celebrating Bullard’s axing, but he urged his former colleague to look at the deep-seated racism inherent in his attitude. “A newspaper firing you is not the same as a tribunal saying what can or can’t be published.”

Van Graan said he saw our South African society as more divided along racial lines than ever before. “David might express what many think, but it reinforces stereotypes and perpetuates the divisions inherited from the past. Eskom really messes up and the sub-text is that blacks can’t manage without white expertise. This separates people; it doesn’t embrace across the divisions.”

Bullard was challenged about crying “freedom of expression” to beat political totems when it was convenient and then to reinforce racist stereotypes.

He countered, saying, “You don’t know where the boundary is but if you’re always worried about offending somebody, you’ll never write a column. Satire offends because it takes advantage of peoples’ weaknesses. That’s what makes it successful. I see myself as an equal opportunity offender, successfully pissing off English and Afrikaans, Islamic and Jewish. Do we need a suppression of humour act now?"

Bullard said he’d made many enemies, including Pallo Jordan, whose day job was "renaming airports". Whatever your skin colour, if you’re incompetent we need to criticise you. “The ANC is the largest (dis)organised crime syndicate in the country. Am I racist because I criticise black people?” Bullard noted that the audience was almost exclusively white. “Where are the black guys? Is this Rorke’s Drift all over again?” The audience applauded.

Zapiro erupted: “I am damned if I can endure your nice patter, the clevery funny stuff. Too many people gave a nice big round of applause to that. There has to be space for critical debate. Space for cartoons, for satire, for savaging corruption. That is what we’re fighting for. Not the right to sit at an elitist table smoking a cigar and spouting racist stuff. I really believe that you and your supporters have to take a damn hard look at yourself.”

Uneven microphone balances meant that the rapid exchange between Bullard and Zapiro – with Kgoleng’s attempts to moderate – were blurred.

“It’s not true that society is going to give you the chop. You’re not seeing the fact that criticism occurs on a continuum. If you look at how somebody writes cartoons, or plays, you look at the ethos. Racism eats away at the fabric of society. Your criticism says essentially that black people are savages, that’s why they’re blaming their failure on everybody else. That doesn’t wash.”

Zapiro said, “We’re both being sued by Jacob Zuma, so why make a big song and dance about freedom of expression, then go and lick Jacob Zuma’s Guccis?”

Bullard replied: “I’m being sued for R1.2 mil and I’m given a way out. Where is the principal in this? I don’t want this to drag on as an unemployed man. It made sense to apologise to him. I told Jacob Zuma I still reserved the right to take the mickey out of him and he laughed. Frankly, I just wanted the case to go away.”

In the question and answer session, Bullard fielded from fans and detractors on the floor, commencing with the Sunday Times' Andrew Donaldson, who shook his finger from the gallery above: “The attack on Mondli was unfair. It took him four days of careful consideration. There were deliberations behind the scenes. Mondli is a fantastic editor under extreme duress from that fool, Essop Pahad, who is militating that government should withhold advertising. Now that is a real threat to us!”

Bullard retorted, saying, “You and I know that my sacking had nothing to do with the article. It was a convenient excuse. The reality was that I annoyed Avusa management.”

Phakama Mbonambi, editor of wordsetc said he’d been mildly irritated by the column. “I understand that if you write satire and have a huge fan base it’s easy to get carried away and go overboard. In The Star you stood by the column. Then you apologised. Make up your mind. Apologise or stand by what you wrote.”

The loony tunes brigade entered at this point, one man saying that he could understand why a black person might want to kill David Bullard – but that is where this exhausted journalist opted to exercise her freedom of exit. With some 2000 words to be knocked into shape by her 9am deadline, it suddenly seemed preferable to get some fresh air than watch David Bullard bleed any more.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

Book SA

David Bullard: Zapped by Zapiro!

Reply

Events