Botswana cartoonist Stephen Gaongalelwe was removed from a court proceeding and his drawings confescated after security officers noticed him drawing during the court session. He was there on assignment by a newspaper editor and told he couldn’t get the drawings back without a letter from the editor describing the purpose of the drawings.
According to the Botswana Gazette, the presiding judges were alerted to the incident and ordered security to return the drawings and allow Gaongalelwe to continue citing that the artist was not distracting nor doing anything illegal.
In the article Stephen Gaongalelwe is the name of one of the judges. The cartoonist’s name is Albert Lekgaba.
This sort of thing happens to reporters fairly often, everywhere. Some zealous cop wants you to leave the scene or stop taking pictures or stop asking questions, and then the scene commander — or in this case, the judges — comes over and says it’s cool and things continue as they ought.
I’m surprised it made the paper. It’s usually only news when cooler heads do not prevail.
Must have been one baad drawing…
Like a top official from Turkey once said, to paraphrase: ” Democracy and freedom is a funny thing, it’s like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube . . . once you squeeze it out, you can’t get it back in . . . “
That used to happen to me in math class a lot….