Mandela Day And Some Related Cartoons
Wednesday, 15 July 2009, at 13:30Apparently, this coming Saturday is Mandela Day.
The general date range is between the mid 50s and late 80s, more or less chronologically, and the cartoonists vary from international to local.
And then, to round it all off with a piece from the early nineties:
Wednesday, 15 July 2009, at 13:49
Wonder how many people will actually give up 67 minutes to actually do something good,
Wednesday, 15 July 2009, at 14:18
Wow these are quite intense!
Wednesday, 15 July 2009, at 15:18
I will give up 67 minutes to do something good…for myself.
Wednesday, 15 July 2009, at 16:47
Jeremy,
Thank you for sharing these. Some of these are real classics. I’m tempted to pa-a-a-artially diagree with your thesis that local cartoonists weren’t as vocal in their critique of apartheid as foreign colleagues simply because of government censorship. Fair enough: this is part of the story. South Africa’s satirists of yore have left us an ink-stained legacy to be proud of, from the late Abe Berry to early Zappy Zapiro.
But when it comes to the liberal press in apartheid Seffrika, I subscribe to the argument made by Max du Preez (in his memoir Pale Native, for example): That while the ‘petty apartheid’ of separate benches and drinking fountains was obviously farcical and easily targetted for critique, many members of the liberal press (most, says Max) blanched at the prospect of completely non-racial democracy and all the apocalyptic consequences. From du Preez’s left of left point of view, it should also be pointed out that crude “the Afrikaners were to blame” arguments are unhelpfully simple: nice, english newspapers owned by big industry (such as Anglo-American) had as much to fear as anyone about the revolution that might come when the apartheid beast collapsed.
This is not to say that the cartoonists, journalists, editors of the mainstream liberal press were all gutless bourgeois worms (and certainly not vicious white supremacists). But surely a cartoonist, even one with his heart in the right place, might lose some of his straight-talking vigour when promoting a revolution that might seem quite terrifying when, well, you read the headlines.
I would think that’s where many of our cartoonists lay. And I would think that’s a very damned good reason why some of them might have been a little mealy-mouthed. And let’s not even start on the blokes inking it up for Die Burger.
Thoughts?
Wednesday, 15 July 2009, at 17:12
One can never judge what someone else thinks or believes with any accuracy – we South Africans, however, like to judge and condemn – maybe it’s time we look at ourselves in the mirror and see whether we aren’t the gutless ones.