“It’s so interesting to engage with people decades younger than me, and I’m always listening. It shifts the way I think when I hear what young people have to say, often with insights and points of view that I haven’t thought about, so there is great reciprocity,” says South Africa’s celebrated editorial cartoonist, Jonathan Shapiro, best known as Zapiro.

“It’s therefore particularly special for me to receive an honorary doctorate in Education.” On 19 May 2025 he was conferred with an honorary doctorate in Education by the University of Pretoria.

His cartoons are widely used in schools and universities as teaching aids and in exam papers and textbooks. “It’s really pleasing to me and I love it when students tell me that my cartoons have helped their understanding in a range of subjects.”

Question what you hear, see and read

To students and graduates he says: “Question what you hear, see and read. Don’t take things at face value – this is an inherent aspect of free thought. Don’t rely on social media. Find proper sources and back up what you think, don’t just swallow fake news and conspiracies. Be conscious of confirmation bias, be conscious of free thinking and continue developing an independent way of thinking—with a lot of second guessing.”

Zapiro has been obsessed with cartoons and comics since childhood when he started drawing and never stopped. He advanced his drawing skills during his degree in architectural studies at the University of Cape Town, but then his desire to be a cartoonist kicked in and he began graphic design at UCT, only to be interrupted by army conscription.

After refusing to carry a rifle in the army, he was instead forced him to carry a heavy lead pole everywhere in place of a rifle, but he used it as a prop to parody what was wrong with the army and the apartheid regime. While in the army he became a cartoonist-activist in anti-apartheid organisations.

Then in 1988 he headed to the School of Visual Arts in New York on being awarded a Fulbright scholarship. He studied media arts, including satirical cartooning and caricature, which propelled his career.

Incisive, satirical, witty and often shocking

Since the 1980s, his incisive, satirical, witty and often shocking cartoons have been a compelling voice of what is happening in South Africa, spanning the apartheid and democratic eras.

It requires incredible commitment and bravery, as his work has frequently blown up into major confrontations. He has had death threats to himself and his family, he has been the target of an assassination plot, and his cartoons have been many times banned. He was also unsuccessfully sued, for R15million and R7million respectively by former president, Jacob Zuma.

Mandela phoned me

During Nelson Mandela’s presidency Zapiro didn’t let him off the hook either, but Mandela responded positively, as Shapiro explains: “When the Cape Argus newspaper stopped publishing my cartoons in 1997, Mandela phoned me. At first I thought that it was friends messing with me, but I quickly realised it really was Mandela.

“He said he was upset that my cartoons would no longer be in the Cape Argus; that he liked seeing them every day. I told him I was amazed that he’d personally phoned me after seeing my cartoons becoming more and more critical of the ANC. Mandela responded ‘that is your job’ and in that moment it affirmed everything that I was, and am meant to do.”

Zapiro doesn’t scare easily

Zapiro has never stopped going for it. He’s incensed politicians, presidents, business leaders and just about every religion. “On occasion I have apologised but I don’t like backing down,” says Zapiro who doesn’t scare easily, but there have been occasions that have deeply disturbed him, such as death threats that extended to his family. “But then you carry on,” he says.

Recently, Facebook and Instagram took down some of his cartoons, including one in response to Trump withdrawing critical US aid agency funding. He featured President Donald Trump in a Nazi uniform sending out the Aids vulture to kill millions of Africans. “I suspect bots might pick up these things and are either incapable of detecting irony or it is part of the widespread media and information censorship we are seeing in the US, or they are programmed to take out anything with swastikas,” says Zapiro.

This leads to the conversation about Harvard University refusing to relinquish freedom of speech to Trump. “Why does it take the richest university in the world – and why has it taken so long for educational institutions and other institutions – to say ‘No!’’ to Trump?” he says.

Bullying and censorship in America

“The bullying and censorship going on in America that we are all seeing is so damaging and pervasive and I would like to see some other big institutions following Harvard’s line. If they don’t, the Nazi-style purge of knowledge and the culture of diversity will extend to many more universities, museums and art institutions. It’s a concerted campaign to destroy the progressive part of America.”

He applauds the small handful of brilliant radical cartoonists in the US, adding that many others are “middle of the road and they don’t push the boundaries”. He pushes boundaries on a daily basis through his work in the Daily Maverick. “Fortunately the deadlines are less intense with online publishing compared to print when I started in the 1980s. You had to either drive to the newspaper or magazine’s offices to deliver your work or courier it up to Joburg. From the mid-80s we had high resolution faxes and I learnt how to draw in a style that was clear enough to be printed on the other side. Then came scans in the early 90s and by 1995 the scans were amazing. And now we just send them over the internet.”

Pencil and ink

Despite all the technology available today, Zapiro continues to draw his cartoons on paper with pencil and ink. And he doesn’t use AI. “AI doesn’t fit into my creativity,” he says. “AI is breathing down the neck of every profession and it is becoming more self-aware all the time. I think it’s still some way from producing the satire, humour and irony in editorial cartooning, which all about surprise. As a cartoonist you even surprise yourself. You don’t know what will crop up during the thinking process. You’re drawing away and suddenly everything changes and becomes so much better, and you have no idea how you did it – it’s a wonderful eureka moment.”