Apparently it is spring. We know this because there are a pair of randy hippos out there and the city has issued guidelines on the appropriate behaviour should one run into these amorous beasts while strolling round Zeekoevlei.

Under no circumstances chase the hippos. That's a given, you'd think. But then again, Capetonians in that part of the southern suburbs regard themselves as nature lovers and will go to extreme lengths to "share space" with these brutes which, were it not for the funny feet and the cute ears, could easily be mistaken for whales.

However, here at the Mahogany Ridge, huddled as we are around jars of anti-freeze, we have no time for such dalliances. News reached us early in the week of desperate business in Togo, which is in the throes of being basket-cased by a despotic president, Faure Gnassingbé. 

Women in Let's Save Togo -- a coalition made up of nine civil society groups and seven opposition parties and movements -- have reportedly been on a week-long sex strike since Monday to bolster reform demands.

The coalition wants Gnassingbé to stand down. He took over from his father, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, who had been in power since 1967, when he died in 2005. 

As is so often the case with leaders of tiny African states, Eyadéma's personality cult was quite extensive. He had an entourage of a thousand women who sang and danced in praise of him; his official portrait was everywhere, including wristwatches; and he was even depicted in a comic book as a superhero with extraordinary powers. 

He survived several assassination attempts, one of which was commemorated annually as "the Feast of Victory Over Forces of Evil". He also claimed he was the only survivor of a 1974 aircraft disaster to present himself as invincible, and that it was a plot by imperialists opposed to his plans to nationalise the country's mines. How fitting, then, that when he did pop his clogs, he did so during a flight.

But back to the sex strike. Isabelle Ameganvi, the coalition leader who called for it, believes it will urge Togo's men to take action against Gnassingbé. According to reports, most Togolese women seemed supportive of the idea, although several expressed misgivings about their menfolk's commitment. Jean-Pierre Fabre, leader of the opposition National Alliance for Change, for example, felt that one week was too long. "Let's go for only two days," he said.

Aristophanes, of course, knew of the problems that came with sex strikes. His comedy Lysistrata, written some 2 500 years ago, details attempts by the eponymous heroine to end the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta by persuading the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace. Naturally, it all backfires spectacularly, and instead a war between the sexes is inflamed.

"Inflamed" is perhaps putting it mildly. One of the characteristics of Aristophanic comedy was that many of his male characters were said to have worn tights over grotesque padding, with a prodigious leather phallus barely concealed by a short tunic.

Which brings us to the latest painting of President Jacob Zuma -- Ayanda Mabulu's Umshini Wam (Weapon of Mass Destruction).

Rather cunningly, Mabulu has suggested that it is only by looking at this portrait with non-African eyes, as it were, does it become an issue of some controversy. 

"The painting depicting Jacob Zuma is a respectful one," he has said. "He is clothed in his culture. He is clothed in his manhood. Only a Eurocentric viewpoint would see him as naked. He is not naked -- I did not paint him with an uncircumcised penis. This is a metaphor that shows he is not a boy -- he is a man, an elder, a father, a leader."

Predictably, the ruling party's regular coterie of art critics do not see it this way. But that is their wont. Interestingly, the amateur social anthropologists among us have also stepped forward to point out that Zuma is a Zulu and Mabulu has portrayed the Bull of Nkandla as, God forbid, some kind of Xhosa person.

My concerns with this emerging branch of South African contemporary art is its increasingly Aristophanic tendency. If the Zuma of Brett Murray's The Spear was well-hung, then in Mabulu's hands he is a monster. Where it will it end, I wonder -- Jake the Peg? The Human Tripod?

In the meantime, should their will falter, perhaps the Togolese women could look to Mabulu's work for inspiration. And they should remember that, when the artist previously painted the president tackle out, as it were, his injured, overworked penis was in a crutch. And that's not funny.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus

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