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News: October 2012

Zuma Drops All Charges Against Zapiro

ZAPIRO DECLINES TO RECIPROCATEAfricartoons welcomes the news that President Zuma has dropped all charges against cartoonist ZAPIRO in what appears to be a response to the best legal advice the president has received on the matter. And if recent reports of Zuma's legal budget are anything to go by, that advice hasn't come cheaply. Who knows how much of the cost of this suit is to be picked up by the taxpayer?Hopefully that issue will soon be brought to light by our thriving investigative journalists, and then duly addressed by Zapiro and his fellow editorial cartoonists. Because an important detail of this withdrawal of the president's case against the cartoonist is that Zapiro, with the backing of his newspaper, has refused to compromise in his stand for free expression.

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Posted on Oct 29, 2012 by Africartoons

The New Age Commits Jermicide

NEWSPAPER EXTINGUISHES ITS MAVERICK CARTOONIST

The New Age, the national newspaper which launched in December 2010 with an editorial policy with a declared bias towards the ruling party, has terminated its contract with its inaugural editorial cartoonist.

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Posted on Oct 18, 2012 by Africartoons

Africartoons at the African News Innovation Challenge

JOHN CURTIS atTechCamp, Zanzibar, Oct 4-8I’ve been in Zanzibar the past few days, attending a “TechCamp” at the invitation of the African News Innovation Challenge in which africartoons.com is amongst the forty finalists. And it's been amazing. Mixing it up with journalists  and techies, many of whom share an interest in political cartoons, has brought me much encouragement and inspired many ideas for taking africartoons to the next level. Should africartoons’ proposal make it through the selection process which follows this camp, we will be awarded a significant amount of seed money to implement the changes we envisage to make africartoons a truly world class service to the cartoonists, and the greater audience that we deliver their cartoons to. We intend making this sustainable (for the cartoonists and ourselves) by amping up our efforts to find new publishing markets for the cartoons, offer (for those cartoonists who’d like us to) prints and originals for sale, and provide readers of the cartoons on our website and social media outlets an even better experience.  But I’d be very interested in any ideas you may have for our improvement, sustainability or any other opportunities open to us.

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Posted on Oct 08, 2012 by Africartoons