Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Cartoonist

After finally completing two years' military conscription in June, 1981, I mulled over what to do with my life. Having been raised on the cartoons of Don Kenyon - a former Transkei magistrate and brother of Springbok rugby captain Bazil - I tried my hand at a few. I found it hard to inject any humour into a situation which at times was dire indeed.



The winter of 1981 must have been a particularly torrid one for migrants who moved from the Transkei and Ciskei to Cape Town in search of work. Piet Promises was the nickname given to then apartheid minister of the Orwellian ministry of co-operation and development. Koornhof oversaw the forced removal of God knows how many people. In places like Nyanga and Crossroads, shacks were demolished in the middle of winter and people were told to "go back to from whence you came". The major drawback with this cartoon is the people don't look very African.


In this cartoon I show Koornhof as a child playing with people's lives like pawns on the map of South Africa.



Already several years after his death in Security Police detention in 1977, Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko's impact was still being felt. Here, borrowing from Kenyon, I have two elderly men discussing events of the day.



By now in the PFP, Harry Schwarz must have made some quip about toothpaste in parliament. I even got the Groot Krokodil, in the distance, to smile.



I think this says it all about why the PFP called for a no vote in the 1983 referendum, as black people wait outside while white, coloured and Indian people go about implementing a new constitution which excluded the vast majority of South Africans, represented by those empty chairs.

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