By Andrew
Mulenga
“Dad that’s
your grandchild you are defiling!” yells a single mother as she walks into the
bedroom that she shares with her infant after a hard day’s work at the office. “I asked her and she agreed… sorry my daughter…
but she was willing to do it” responds the old man, who is in the buff with the
child wrapped in his arms.
Through a cartoon Wisdom tells how a man sexually abused his own grand daughter |
The woman is
in a formal, nine hour per day shift but cannot afford a baby sitter and
therefore entrusts her child in the apparently not so safe hands of her aged
father whom she accommodates as a dependant.
In a separate
incidence, a well-known school teacher is in a local pub. It is pay day, and he
has more than his share of Shake Shake
opaque beer, as he often does around this time of month. Under the influence he
gets up, wobbles to a large speaker in the corner of the room and takes his
time to urinate on it.
“Hey! Can’t
you see you are urinating on the speaker”, screams the serious, but tolerant
bar owner to his loyal but erring customer. “How can I see it when I’m sleep
walking”, responds the drunk teacher. As luck would have it, the bar owner
forgives his intoxicated patron and goes on to drive him safely home.
A resident was so drunk, fell asleep in a local bar, got up moments later (while half asleep) and walked to a speaker to relieve himself |
The incidences
were not broadcast on any community radio or television station nor printed in
any newspaper. However, these and similar tales are ‘published’ by Post Malata.
What is Post Malata? You ask. A person, a magazine
or newspaper of sorts. Well, no. It is a series of one-page ‘cartoon bulletins’
that chronicle the foolishness, humour and tragedy of everyday life in the tiny
township of Malata. Nestled between the leafy suburbs of Kabulonga and Ibex
Hill, in size Malata is just a fraction of your average high density township, so
everyone knows everyone.
Cartoonist, Wisdom Fwati |
Mr Fwati
explains an ordeal that he recently ‘published’: “There is this well-known guy,
one of the neighbourhood thugs whom everyone fears went to steal cement from a
construction site but when a friend alerted him that the police were nearby. He
ran away and in the process trod on sleeping dogs waking up the entire
neighbourhood with their howling and scampering”.
He explains
that the following day, some residents went to Ngoma’s shop and asked whether
he (Mr Fwati) had heard the latest, and asked him to draw it for Post Malata.
But it is not
everything that is published. Mr Ngoma (from the shop) admits to self
sensorship or indeed a media regulation of sorts. He functions as a provisional
editor to ensure that his friend’s cartoons do not assassinate anyone’s
character.
“This is a
small compound and we wouldn’t want to make enemies with each other, Look at
this it,” he says picking up a censored copy of the Post Malata that did not make it to the wall “This happened at one
of the shops here, these two boys broke into a shop to steal but were caught.
Everyone knows the little boys and the father to one of them is our friend so I
decided not to stick it up”.
In essence the
community has embraced Post Malata as
a means of news dissemination, where they can be informed about some of the
township’s peculiar activities and luckily they have Mr Fwati in their midst.
His drawings have conscious innocence, combined with humour and a keen insight
into character. Coupled with his ability to portray spur of the moment
scenarios it is not surprising how the drawings have caught on and captured the
attention of an entire community.
Wisdom's portrayal of a well known, local bully and thug who was interrupted during a robbery and was spotted scampering by the community |
“How this all
started was that, whenever I draw something for fun I would give it to my friend
Duncan at the shop. He just used to keep them and show them to people,” says Mr
Fwati “It’s the people themselves who asked him whether I could draw recent
scandals from the compound, so I did, and then he started sticking them on the wall.
So whenever something happens in the neighbourhood they really look forward to
coming to the shop to see it on the wall.”
Although Mr
Fwati is up to date with the goings on in Malata, he himself is a non-resident.
He lives in Mtendere Township, not too far away, and only comes to Malata when
he is either visiting his friend Duncan or his mother, a retired teacher who
resides at Chibelo Basic School and is still waiting for her pension.
Duncan reads an 'edition' of Post Malata at the shop where the cartoons are usually displayed |
For his
drawings, he uses regular blue, black or red ball-point pens (the type you will
find in a school bag) on whatever piece of standard A4 sized white paper he can
find. Each illustration carries its own bold, hand written headline as well as
a caption describing the episode in detail with a footer in the corner that reads
“True story (Kaleza)…” of course kaleza
being the chi Nyanja for thunderbolt.
Customarily, in many of our local languages, we swear upon a thunderbolt. Meaning in case the utterer is lying, may a thunderbolt
strike him or her where they stand.
The innocent looking market at Malata compound is a sweltering pot of activity by night |
What is most noteworthy
about this artist and his Post Malata
is the social dynamics of how a cartoonist hungry for an audience is able to
find his purpose as a satirist in the community by default because he has no
other space to channel his creative expression.
Nonetheless,
this is nothing new. It is not the first time an artist is having upfront
contact with his community audience by means of site-specific art that challenges the innocence of
space, in this case a market stall.
The ‘tavern art’ of the pre
and post-colonial era was born out of artists’ calling to be a mouthpiece in
the community; again both humourist, and moralist, just like Mr Fwati. Although tavern art started out as
graffiti, it was beloved by the township dwellers who could relate to it
because it told their story. It was their art. Art for the people by the
people. Some of Zambia’s most prodigious artists such as the fabled Akwila
Simpasa of Freedom Statue fame started out as tavern artists in Chamboli,
scribbling everyday scenes of oppression and police brutality in charcoal
on the walls. Attaining folk hero status,
tavern artists were never arrested by the authoritarian Mine Police
because the community enjoyed the art and would raise the alarm whenever the
authorities were at hand.
“We cartoonists have got a lot to offer but have
nowhere to show our work. Newspapers and magazines do not give us the
opportunity. When they do the money is very little, they do no appreciate our
creativity,” complains the Kitwe raised Mr Fwati who is cagey with details of
his date of birth and just says he was born in Chamboli in the 70s, went to
Rokana and Kitwe primary schools and subsequently completed grade 12 at Serenje
Boys in 1991.
He is
currently among a group of cartoonists compiling work for Flip, a yet to be launched magazine exclusively for cartoonists
that is being coordinated by well-known Zambian caricaturist and social
activist Kiss Abrahams. – Courtesy
Bulletin & Record Magazine (Zambia)
Keep untie good work sir.
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