News: June 2013

FROM BEING BANNED TO BEING IDOLISED

As global attention is focused on the ailing Nelson Mandela, a recent radio interview and two online slideshows featuring South African cartoonists tells the story of the icon's life through editorial cartoons.

But Mandela's cartoonography is missing a few chapters, at least from a South African perspective. For one thing, the struggle hero's image was banned by the apartheid government's 'Banned Persons Act (1950)' which prohibited the quoting, referencing and depiction of political opponents.

And then, in about 1989 when those laws became relaxed, and in 1990 when they were lifted, cartoonists - starved of any graphic reference of the famous prisoner because of the ban - were stretched to imagine what he looked like after 27 years in prison.

The interview and slideshows tell how the cartoonists overcame these challenges and went on to produce perhaps the most positive cartoon narrative of any politician's life ever told.