Murray’s latest solo offering at the Goodman Gallery is everything one would expect from an artist who has spent over two decades bouncing three-dimensional tirades against authoritarianism and corruption off gallery walls. Falling neatly within this established line of attack, 'Hail to the Thief' is directed at the capriciousness of South Africa’s current political elite. The irony of Murray’s chosen subject, namely the coincidence of pseudo-socialist sloganeering and the spoils of privatized capital all exiting and entering the same set of mouths, has become a common butt of certain brands of South African humour and is difficult to miss.

The show follows on formally and thematically from Murray’s previous Goodman offering, 'Crocodile Tears' (2007; 2009). But while the list of ingredients is similar the palette has soured considerably – corporate maroons and deep soviet reds have replaced pastel blues while anger has replaced bemused astonishment. Populated by satire, sarcasm, and a major dose of disillusionment, the show is made up of a series of mocking screen prints, wall-mounted sheet-metal cutouts of populist insignia, badge-styled resin and aluminum reliefs, perspex cutouts and wooden collages, a take-away lithographed poster (featuring the ANC logo with the words, 'FOR SALE') and two freestanding bronzes. The bronzes, one party state (a seated, smoothly polished and chubby ape with both hands gripping and proffering his penis) and the party vs. the people (a larger ape mounting another from behind) are the subtlest of the works. Tellingly, one party state is an adaptation of a similar work Murray made in the 80s titled voortrekker.

The large hand-cut sheet-metal cutouts, gleaming of gold and silver leaf, sandwich socialist imagery (think sheaves of wheat, athletic sickle-bearing youths and beaming sunrises) and catchphrases (‘viva viva’, ‘amandla’ and ‘ubuntu’) with giant dollar signs. Others feature monarchic heraldry, eagles and lions, with bloodied claws and large hanging penises. The point is driven further by the screen prints, perspex cutout collages and a hard-hitting set of oversized nametags (titled the grave turners) for Steve ‘Kick-Back King’ Biko and Chris ‘Hush-Money’ Hani, Walter ‘The Sweetner’ Sisulu, Joe ‘Mr 10 Percent’ Slovo and Oliver ‘On the take’ Tambo. The screen prints, iconic posters exhumed from the '80s and edited to suit present day ideals, are probably the major dampening point. Solomon Mahlangu’s ‘tell my people that I love them and that they must continue the struggle’ is appended with ‘…for Chivas Regal, merc’s and kick-backs’, and the last line of ‘now you have touched the women you have struck a rock, you have dislodged a boulder, you will be crushed’ reads ‘you will be president’. In the back gallery, a set of wood and veneer collages assert statements from the Freedom Charter in the negative, ‘there shall not be houses and security for all’, ‘the wealth of the country shall not be shared by all’ etc.

For the most part, the tactic is predictably offensive and questionable – yet, as with much of Murray’s work, it's a simultaneously heartfelt and scathing response to an ultimately confusing set of circumstances made spectacular by popular culture and the media. While certain works falter in their impetus, the basic logic of ‘same trough different pigs’ or ‘same shit different flies’ (an appropriation of a comment by Breyten Breytenbach offered by the artist and a viewer at a walkabout) holds considerable weight. What pervades however is confusion. Breeding between disillusionment and anger, two perspex collages occupy alternate ends of this ultimately sentimental spectrum; the first titled killed twice states ‘Biko is Dead’ while the second simply spells out its title, Fuck all politicians.

And then there’s the blackface – red, yellow and brown perspex cut into the shapes of several figures triumphantly holding up a placard with a dollar sign, their mouths stretched into that unmistakable rubber smile. Although it’s subtle, the work (titled Cash) crosses and makes visible a thin and tense line strung up among all of the works. In a brief review of Murray’s show, Sean O’Toole mentions writer, critic and curator Khwezi Gule’s comment on Anton Kannemeyer’s work being racist (Gule made the comment within a Mail & Guardian review of Kannemeyer’s latest book ‘Papa in Afrika’ published in 2010 by Jacana). The book features a miscellany of extreme racial stereotypes from golliwog styled politicians to politically correct white liberals. It is unmistakably racist. Just like this. And although Murray has probably come the closest to finally creating a whiteface (the bubbleheads of his 2002 ‘White Like Me solo’ in Johannesburg) the inclusion of this scared white response to politicians that are the same as the old ones, just a different colour, is difficult to accept. It's not shocking, critical or funny, it’s naïve and problematic. But at least it’s honest.

It may be prudent to clarify here since the odds are, as usual, stacked at a slant (white artist, white cube, white director, white reviewer, white editor) – that unless we South Africans, all of us, can start being honest about our racism and the conditions that perpetuate it (like a 5-step program where admitting that there is a problem is the first and most important step) we will all remain stuck in this naïve and problematic space. Or maybe I’m just naïve.

Murray deals in race and identity along with politics and his work functions voluntarily as an emotional register. It’s a gut and a pop response to the action-packed media-driven tableau of the state of the nation and his position within it. While the shift of his gaze from internal to external (which does not necessarily mean from pink to brown) seems at first to create a less nuanced, less subtle and less complex rendition of the given state of affairs, the consistency of his honesty remains as a redeeming critical factor. Once again taking up the position of the child throwing rocks at a tank, or even sand, or bubbles – an image which seems divisive in terms of innocent and guilty but still sees violence coming from both sides – Murray does little to disguise his anger and his naivety.

Nevertheless, if this is how we are (in Murray’s words) to ‘scratch at the soft underbelly’ of the ruling party, the political elite, the despots and the kleptocrats, we may have to sharpen our sticks.