EVALUATING THE ROLE OF POLITICAL CARTOONS IN SIMPLIFYING THE SELF-CONSTRUCTED UNDERSTANDING OF SOUTH AFRICA’S CONTEMPORARY POLITICS

Abstract

Newspaper cartoons in modern societies through depiction of events capture the reality of societies; as a result, they play a significant role in documenting the real-life activities. In view of societal ills, cartoonists convert these into portraits and presents them back to the society as a reflection in which the latter may observe its own images though in a satiric and humorous manner. While cartoons capture the issues at stake, they tend to perpetuate the commonly known headlines; retain its attention and simultaneously simplify the issue in a mockery way. In this regard, the paper aims to illustrate that the qualities of cartoons in reflecting the societal ills and in the following sections their ability to simplify South African politics. Their simplification capabilities are observed from the illiterate citizens being able to comprehend with the message embedded in the cartoons. In collecting the data, the study employed qualitative techniques, where document analysis was utilized to illustrate how cartoons simplify, reflect, inculcate and perpetuate events in the South African politics. The study utilizes the constructivism theory to demonstrate the reflective nature of cartoons in vividly depicting the conducts of the society through pictures and illustrate how cartoons retain attention. The findings show that in simplifying knowledge, cartoons retain the attention of an issue at stake and behave as watchdogs in revealing and exposing the ills of the society. The paper concludes that that cartoons have a distinct visual style that primarily uses various types of lines for depicting characters and it can be seen as their biggest visual characteristic. This allows for a simplified way of presentation has given cartoons a reputation as a medium of light-hearted and easily readable content.