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The changing face of South African cartooning

Edited by Andy Mason and John Curtis, Don’t Joke! The Year in Cartoons is a collection of some 400 political cartoons published in South African newspapers over the past year. According to the back-cover blurb, “South Africa’s cartooning maestros join forces with the new post-apartheid generation to tell the story of the most event-filled year since 1994. Hard-hitting and hilarious, Don’t Joke! brings it all back in a rush of satires, parodies and flights of fancy that’ll rearrange your head”.

The following passage is taken from the book’s introduction: “Looking back over the period covered by this book, during which three South African presidents have held office, one is struck by the rapid movement of events following Judge Chris Nicholson’s controversial judgment of 12 September 2008. Less than two weeks later, Kgalema Motlanthe became president, to be replaced, a mere seven months later, by Jacob Zuma.

“Cartoonists, who had hitherto portrayed Zuma in an extremely negative light, began to represent him differently. In the cartoons at the beginning of this book, Zuma is generally depicted as a machine-gun-wielding thug or a threatening ogre. A year later, our president, as portrayed by our cartoonists, looks positively avuncular.

“As South Africans, we’re used to dramatic transitions. Without them, we’d probably die of boredom. Don’t Joke! records many of the transitional moments that shaped our reality during the course of 2009. But it also represents a transitional moment in the history of South African cartooning itself.

“For the first 130 years or so of its history, South African cartooning was pretty much a whites-only activity. Today the situation is quite different and, for the first time, cartoonists representing the country’s full demographic spectrum, articulating a range of political views, are featured in the same annual. (Although it should be noted that, except for Noseweek’s Stacey Stent, we still have no female political cartoonists.)

“Cartoonists are generally known only to the readers of the papers in which their work appears, so the range and diversity of the 29 cartoonists represented in Don’t Joke! may come as a surprise to many readers.

“Alongside the big names are a number of others whose work appears in smaller regional papers and is thus not widely known. Seeing all these cartoonists together in the same book confirms that South African cartooning has finally come of age.

“Don’t Joke! is the first of what the editors hope will be an annual series of collections representing the full range of South African political cartooning and, as such, an ongoing journal of the development of the discipline in this country, recording the emergence of new cartoonists and tracking their development.

“The project was made possible by the enthusiastic co-operation of the participating cartoonists, who all share a common commitment to the development of their unique profession. None of them was paid for their participation in the project. Instead, the royalties from the book will go towards the developmental work of the Centre for Comic, Illustrative and Book Arts (CCIBA) at Stellenbosch University.

“Established in 2009, the CCIBA is an interdisciplinary institute devoted to researching, promoting and developing comic art and narrative illustration in South Africa. Don’t Joke!, is published in association with Jacana Media, is the CCIBA’s first publishing project.”

Robbie Stammers

The book is available at all retail bookstores and online from Kalahari.net and Loot.co.za, and is priced at R175.00

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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