The annual Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award of the Cartoonists Rights Network, International (CRNI) was given to South African Jonathan Shapiro on 6 July 2007 at a dinner in Washington, D.C.

Shapiro, of Cape Town, incurred a US $2 million defamation suit from former deputy president Jacob Zuma, now the African National Congress's deputy president, with cartoons about Zuma's testimony at his recent trial. Zuma, a former chair of the National AIDS Council, was acquitted of a rape charge, but enraged HIV/AIDS educators by testifying that he minimised the risk of infection from an HIV-positive woman by taking a shower.

Shapiro -- using the pen name Zapiro -- countered with new cartoons about the lawsuit, which three newspaper groups published. A political cartoonist for over two decades, Shapiro was detained without trial for his anti-apartheid activities in the 1980s.

Visit these links:
- CRNI: http://tinyurl.com/2aty88
- Books collecting Shapiro's work: http://tinyurl.com/2eytjp
- Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapiro
(10 July 2007)