ELL (cartoon)Notes on Black and White in Ink- Mason

Abstract

• Mason argues that cartooning in South Africa helped crystallise issues of allegiance and identity, introduced revolutionary concepts into public discourse, undermined apartheid ideology, and legitimised the political struggle against apartheid.
• Despite a long-running black press, there remains a scarcity of black cartoonists; editors of so‑called 'liberal' newspapers are blamed for not identifying indigenous talent or developing black South African cartooning, instead relying on white cartoonists and syndicated strips.
• Sartre’s reflection on historical urgency is invoked: when faced with looming conflict, the detachment of artists gives way to a compelled, historically shaped production of work. The idea is that South African artists, over the last two decades of apartheid, felt drawn into the struggle, with history demanding engagement rather than artistic detachment.
• The anti-apartheid struggle brought together a broad left-wing, liberal, ethical, and ecumenical consensus: Communists with churchgoers, Muslim radicals with Jewish intellectuals, in the fight to end apartheid.
• The state continued to terrorise even after formal concessions, contributing to fear up to the 1994 elections.
• This climate spurred a flowering of art against apartheid and sparked debates within the arts community about artistic quality versus political commitment.
• Racial separation (black townships vs white suburbs) produced different responses to ideological imperatives; white artists often lacked credibility when speaking for oppressed blacks, while black artists tended to see themselves as the ddresses of the people.
• Thami Mnyele urged black artists to engage directly with oppressed communities with political insight, skill, and revolutionary sentiment (Staff Rider, 1988).
• Mothobi Mutloatse argued that black writers could not afford art-for-art’s-sake when what was at stake was human freedom; the struggle was about the freedom and humanity of the voteless masses (Forced Landing, 1980).
• Mutloatse’s satirical portrayal of the white writer as self-centered and out of touch reflects the tension white artists faced between outrage at apartheid and fear of black nationalism; Gordimer’s reflections in a 1995 collection describe white writers’ struggle with identity—belonging nowhere and taking responsibility for opposing racism in government (Gordimer, 1995).
• The white liberal position was marked by conflicting impulses: moral outrage vs fear of the rising black power, which is visible in Die Burger cartoons (Mouton 1975; 1976) and in later Cold War rhetoric about a global anti‑communist struggle; blacks were often depicted as pawns in a foreign power struggle rather than as agents with a history of oppression.
• The period’s debates included the danger of reducing political issues to foreign interference rather than addressing lived experiences of black people.
• In short: the era forced a rethinking of authorship, voice, and responsibility, and set the stage for later transitions in South African cartooning.