News

JOHN CURTIS atTechCamp, Zanzibar, Oct 4-8I’ve been in Zanzibar the past few days, attending a “TechCamp” at the invitation of the African News Innovation Challenge in which africartoons.com is amongst the forty finalists. And it's been amazing. Mixing it up with journalists  and techies, many of whom share an interest in political cartoons, has brought me much encouragement and inspired many ideas for taking africartoons to the next level. Should africartoons’ proposal make it through the selection process which follows this camp, we will be awarded a significant amount of seed money to implement the changes we envisage to make africartoons a truly world class service to the cartoonists, and the greater audience that we deliver their cartoons to. We intend making this sustainable (for the cartoonists and ourselves) by amping up our efforts to find new publishing markets for the cartoons, offer (for those cartoonists who’d like us to) prints and originals for sale, and provide readers of the cartoons on our website and social media outlets an even better experience.  But I’d be very interested in any ideas you may have for our improvement, sustainability or any other opportunities open to us.

(AGAIN!)

Despite the judges' observation that the general standard of editorial cartoons has improved over the years, Jonathan Shapiro (pen named ZAPIRO) has once again emerged as the winner of a national award acknowledging his class after his cartoon was adjudicated to be the best by judges of the Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Awards (editorial cartoons category). Zapiro has been the recipient of the award before, going back to its previous incarnation as part of the Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Awards.

HANGING OUT AT THE GALLERY: Another portrait of a naked President Zuma is causing a stir, following the drama created by Brett Murray's 'The Spear'. The latest version, by Ayanda Mabulu, chucks out the spear as inspiration for his work 'Umshini Wam (Weapon of Mass Destruction)' and replaces it with the president's weapon of choice; a machine gun. Predictably, cartoonists have responded enthusiastically to the development.