What’s the name of that Chronicle cartoonist again?

What's the name of that Chronicle cartoonist again? For at least two days, Zimbabweans were involved in heated social media exchanges - some of them very personal, bitter and abusive, over a cartoon that appeared in The Chronicle issue of Thursday, February 4.

What's the name of that cartoonist again? I ask because the argument - which arose from what looked like a genuine expression of mental cringe and distaste for a repugnant work of art, suddenly became a tribal hurly-burly, after the participants got to know the name of the cartoonist.

The exchanges revealed the simmering tribal hate that exists within some in our nation – one that has made it very difficult for Zimbabweans to have one common view on certain things.

It was so sickening to realise how quick Zimbabweans can turn a simple, scholarly of social argument into a tribal rift that anti-climaxes in them either digging old wounds or gloating over them. And debate on the Chronicle cartoon left that threadbare.

Earlier, bloggers had confined their debate to what the cartoon meant to each of them. The name of the cartoonist, who many did not even know at that time, counted for nothing. Most of those who attacked or defended the cartoon based their views on their interpretation of the work of art, not the man or woman who produced it.

Then a bolt from the blue! The cartoonist's name was revealed. The vicissitude was that the bloggers were given tribal artillery with which to attack not only one another's view, but also their tribe. On and on, tribal stereotypes were thrown around, enforced and counter-launched.

Tribal undertones quickly became qualified fact, analysis was pulled from thin air and supported and eventually, two days became too short for a debate that should not have lasted a few hours.

Side shows were created and given space on the sidelines of the cartoon, yet meant to support arguments on the same cartoon. Insults were traded no lesser than the cartoonist's surname was analysed and the Chronicle editors' decision to suspend him scrutinized.

On hindsight and personally, I would like to differ with many views on the cartoon and the manner in which it was debated and the whole matter handled by the cartoonist's employers.

My first misgiving is in the manner that the powers-that-be at The Chronicle handled the issue and how they chose to communicate that with their audience. Too sensational!

Within hours, internal matters meant for the Chronicle boardroom were revealed to outsiders, some of them laymen in the media business, just to nourish their thirst to see "this tribal cartoonist" hung out in the scorching sun to dry.

We were told that in the editor's absence, the cartoonist had jumped protocol and "smuggled" the cartoon into the paper by sending it straight to the sub-editors without presenting it during the editorial brief and that he had actually been taken through a disciplinary hearing (his defence was revealed) and suspended.

The "wronged population" ululated while those who chose the side of the poor father whose job was on the line for a misplaced work of art were taken to the verbal cleaners, accused of being "tribalists" standing out for "your own" – and some really were.

People are hardly rational when they are emotional and taking a decision based on angry outbursts has hardly ever solved any problem. Don't get me wrong, The Chronicle editors had it within their rights to call their employee to a meeting to discuss a shoddy piece of work, but cartoonists are by nature supposed to bring forth emotive issues. What the public views of them should not determine how they are treated at work.

I would personally point some mistakes back to The Chronicle's editor. The cartoonist's name might have been there under the cartoon, but it was not legible on the piece that was traded in the social media – especially on Facebook.

The first mistake was therefore, naming him on the social media, where everything was subsequently sensationalised and resultantly, what could have either been a genuine error of creative judgment or an artistic rush of blood to the brain was viewed as a calculated and sustained effort to demean a certain tribe by another.

I have seen a number of good works by the concerned cartoonist, but I still rate him below the legendary Boyd Maliki, Sipho Masina and Tony Namate, yet today, even those who did not see the latest controversial cartoon know who Wellington Musapenda is.

The second mistake was – at least according to me, revealing all the finer details of what happened on the day in question and the subsequent declaration by the same editor that "the cartoonist will now bear his cross". Utter betrayal!

Now Musapenda is to the ordinary man not only the cartoonist who produced a controversial piece of work exposing his "tribal bigotry and sexist connotations", but also a hot head who deliberately jumped protocol because he knew he had a shit piece of work that demeaned people of the very region in which he operates. Not only that, with the sustained public pressure and the rate at which his case has been handled, he could be out of employment sooner than he can pronounce the "t" in employment contract.

I have no misgivings with The Chronicle editor reining in his subordinates, but I have issues against a leader who finds it difficult to protect his own. There is a world of difference between punishing an errant employee and grandstanding about it just to please a certain population. Genuine leaders are those who publicly stand up for their own, yet berating the wrongdoer away from the prying eyes of the public.

In all fairness, Musapenda's cartoon smacks of regional prejudice and is overly sexist, but I find it to be nowhere near tribal.

While calling him a male chauvinist and a downright regionalist would suffice if he were to be judged by this one piece of work, I still believe those who call him a tribalist have no ground to stand on – again judging by this one piece of work.

And I will stick my head out and say suspending him – either on the strength or lack thereof of the cartoon or jumping protocol, is too harsh a punishment, let alone following it up with a public announcement on Facebook and Twitter. And compared to what we have seen from the likes of South Africa's Zapiro, the offensive impact of Musapenda's cartoon could be too minuscule.

For all my arguments on the social network, I also believe that those who used tribe to debate the cartoon are those two-dimensional Zimbabweans who believe the country is nothing more than a Ndebele-or-Shona proposition.

I was happy to note that most female participants in the debate chose the feminist route over the tribal one – even those from other parts of the country choosing to ignore the tribal exchanges to concentrate on fighting for the sole protection of their western region sisters and their own gender.

Yet there were also others who – apparently for reasons of tribe, chose to be too protective of the cartoonist in their kiss-the-closest-mwana-wekumusha stance to consider the regionalist and sexist impact of the cartoon. To them, the debate changed from being the outrage of a "wronged people" to attacks on a Shona-speaking cartoonist by Ndebeles gone berserk.

Ultimately, the traits of those who believe that for reasons of tribal hang-overs, Zimbabwe should be divided into two separate Ndebele and Shona territories; and those who believe that for purposes of "majority", the country should be improperly fractioned into a Shona over Ndebele proposition, were exposed. To all those the cartoonist's name meant more than what the cartoon spoke to.

At the end of the day, the rational argument that the cartoon enforced and traded long-held stereotypes and innuendos about the people of the Matabeleland and Midlands either stopped to exist or played second fiddle to tribal insults that further tore the population apart – solving nothing in the process, as those who decided not to partake anymore chose silence more as the easy way out than a concession to better and more rational view points.

There were even others who seemed to believe that because it did not hurt them, the cartoon could in no way be considered to be offensive. To them, no-one had the right to question the motive behind this emotive issue and assertions were that Musapenda had to be freed from an uncouth Ndebele mob attacking him simply because he was deemed to be Shona.

While it is true that some people were – because of their own tribal prejudice, wrongly attacking Musapenda for his tribal belonging, logic says those could have been corrected without further rupturing people's emotions by downplaying the impact of his work. So, a debate that should have brought people closer to one another became a clenched-fists quarrel that pulled them further apart – and with that, Zimbabwe became a tale of two tribes.

In a normal world, the cartoon would have meant the same even if it had to come from Maliki, Namate, Steven Harris, Reg Smythe or Chris Browne. And that's because whoever drew it should mean less than what it depicts.

So, what's the name of The Chronicle cartoonist again?

Mxolisi Ncube is an exiled award-winning Zimbabwean journalist who now lives in Johannesburg. He has published stories with many international news publications that include Frontpage Magazine, World Politics Review, South China Morning Post and the Christian Science Monitor. He is a former Johannesburg Correspondent and Sports Editor of The Zimbabwean, a privately-owned newspaper that was published in Zimbabwe, UK and South Africa. He can be contacted on ncubemxolisi90@gmail.com or on his Facebook Account – Mxolisi Ncube.