CSotD: Happy birthday, all things considered
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Nelson Mandela — “Madiba” (his clan name in Xhosa, used affectionately throughout his multicultural nation) — turns 94 today, and South African cartoonists joined in a sort of benevolent conspiracy to wish him a happy birthday.
My favorite is this gentle thank-you from Nanda Soobben, which is not only a very nice caricature of the man but which I think sums up the inexpressible impact he had on a nation which was both struggling and waiting for change for so many years, and how only Madiba could have brought it about without blowing the place to pieces in the process.
Africartoons has assembled a collection of these tributes here. Many are variations on “happy world carrying a birthday cake,” but others used the occasion for a little deeper commentary.
I have several South African Facebook friends, but that’s certainly not a substitute for being there, and I can’t comment on how the nation is doing except through what I am told.
This makes it hard for me to comment at all, because the only thing worse than being one of the blind men examining the elephant is reporting on what you’ve heard from one of the blind men examining the elephant.
There is no substitute for being there.
But here’s how it seems to me: Mandela’s victory over apartheid was a great moment, a defining moment, in South African history. However, as all-encompassing and pervasive an evil as apartheid was, it was not the only systemic problem the nation faced.
And here Jeremy Nell steps in, ever-willing to poke at the most painful part of any question:
Jerm is a bit of a specialist in stirring up controversy, and I am sometimes tempted to suspect him of looking for the worst in a situation just for the glee of having fun with it. However, on his blog, he discounts the notion of setting aside one day to honor Mandela in preference for a deeper commitment to struggle. Coming from such a firebrand, that’s a statement I’d take seriously.
Besides, if you consider that the same cartoonist who did that touching tribute at the top of this blog ran this cartoon last week, I think it’s fair to say things are not perfect in the new South Africa:
As you go through those cartoons (and I hope you will), you’ll see references to “67,” which is the number of years Mandela dedicated to public service and which became a social movement around his birthday: To give 67 minutes of public service or 67 of anything in order to make things better.
You’ll also see references to textbooks, a current crisis in the nation, where schools in Limpopo province were taken over by the federal government, which promptly dropped the ball by destroying their old textbooks and then failing to supply new ones in a timely manner, with the result that the schools have reopened for the year without anything to study from.
Madam & Eve is not the only cartoon to riff on this topic, but it does it rather well, as is often the case with M&E:
This one, by Avi, I include only because I thought it was well-done and a lot of fun. Fun is part of birthdays, too. Check out the date and price in the box at upper left:
A different type of fun is found in this video, which Jerm linked on his site but which I then stole for mine. It’s okay, he didn’t do it either. It was put together by these folks, and I’ll bet it took more than 67 minutes. From looking around for that source, I gather it has gone viral down there. It deserves more exposure up here.
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