African Wave - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

African Wave
Specificity and Cosmopolitanism in African Comics

Massimo Repetti

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While most people consider painting,

novels, and film to be universal formats
of artistic expression, for the combina-
tion of graphic image and narrative
they commonly use expressions tied
to geography, like “Japanese manga,"
“American comics,” “French-Belgian BD”—and now “African
comics.” Yet “African comics” as a homogenous entity probably
does not exist. It is perhaps more accurate to speak of “com-
ics from Africa,” interest in which has taken concrete form in
various exhibitions and international festivals,1 as well as in the
publication of comics albums and academic research, to which I
have personally contributed.

AfricAn ‘ligne clAire’
Non-African readers easily make stereotyped assumptions
about African comics because too often their storylines and
drawings rely on stock characters and recurrent themes, como
witchcraft. In this way, they also contain references that are easy
for readers, lay and academic, to identify and store.

These artists are attracted by the language of European com-
circuitos integrados,2 and this influence can be seen in their detailed realism and
use of all the forms of ligne claire, the style of drawing with clear,
strong lines of equal thickness and importance pioneered by the
Belgian comics artist Hergé. Sin embargo, there is not always a strict
correspondence between an artistic “school” originating in a
colonizing nation (Franco-Belgian BD, American comics, Brit-
ish cartooning, Japanese manga) and the comics in its former
colonies. Por ejemplo, in Safari ya anga za juu (Figs. 1–2), el
Kenyan Anthony Mwangi cites the Belgian comics artist Hergé,
the creator of Tintin and On a marché sur la Lune, and Gado,
who was born in Dar-es-Salaam, takes up the line of French-

man Albert Uderzo, creator of Astérix, in his Abunawasi (Higo.
3). In Réunion, David Bello looks to the Japanese manga tradi-
tion when he deconstructs movement in several consecutive
vignettes in Elize ou les Machins Bleus.

What we see here is the creolization of comics, a phenomenon
in which the mass media have played an essential role. Creolized
culture implies mutual exchange and transfer, a flow of mean-
ings in continuous movement, breaking up old relations and set-
ting up new connections (Hannerz 1987, 1996). This exchange
has nothing to do with Western colonialism, with unidirectional
cultural influence imposed on the colonized subject to the point
of provoking either unconditioned adhesion or rejection. Es
more a relationship between, Por un lado, the comics cre-
ated in a large-scale process in industrialized countries (amer-
ica, Japón, Europa) that tend to be conceived for and read by a
“globalized” audience, and on the other hand, African authors
who change styles, acquire different knowledge, and make cre-
ative contributions to their societies that are richer than the local
cultures in which they originated.

More versatile than its European counterpart, the African
comic is paradoxically both (in Walter Benjamin’s words) art “in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” because it is serialized and
printed in newspapers and books, and a cottage industry which
exists in the market of large-scale distribution because its hori-
zontal integration (creativity–production–publishing) is very
often managed, with great difficulty, by the artists themselves.
African comics artists take advantage of international interest in
art and Africa to make intrusions into the publishing world of
the West and are in turn exploited by cultural operators who are

1 Anthony Mwangi. (Kenya). 1997. Safari ya anga za juu. Nairobi: Sasasema

All iMAgeS froM the Author’S photoS of priNt origiNAlS, with the perMiSSioN
of the ArtiStS/publiSherS.

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2 Anthony Mwangi. (Kenya).
1997. Safari ya anga za juu. Nairobi:
Sasasema.

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not African. Their work lives in a difficult context whose hopes
and fears it reflects, but the beauty of the drawing precludes
excessive aggression toward the reader—which is no surprise.

Like the age in which it lives, the African comic is divided,
shattered, and multiple. Although Africa is still very much tied
to its own cultural traditions, its comics did not arise out of col-
lectively preserved local memory but are part of the global flux
of ideas and images in a world undergoing rapid changes, dónde
new consumer objects come into existence and new cultural
debts and credits are contracted, where relations are volatile and
voices overlap. Por ejemplo, the Congolese Barly Baruti sets his
Mandrill series in 1950s France (Figs. 4–5), while the Frenchman
Jean Philippe Stassen depicts the Rwandan genocide in Deogra-

tias; Frenchman P’tiluc edits a collective album with the Congo-
lese artists Al’Mata, Pat Mombili, y otros; while Congolese
Eric Salla sets his stories in France and depicts them with metic-
ulous realism, drawing on cuttings from magazines sent by post
to him in Kinshasa. Tanzanian artists Godfrey Mwampembwa
has made a animated cartoon for MTV, and the Congolese art-
ist Pat Masioni has published an album in Flemish about the
Plains Indians. Mauritius comics author Man Keong Laval NG
drew a medieval saga, La ballade au bout du monde: Les pierres
levées, and Li-An (Réunion) has started Le Cycle de Tschaï, a
series based on the oeuvre of the fantasy and space opera nov-
elist Jack Vance. Transcontinental exchanges inspire common
artistic paths: African cartoonists have collaborated with Euro-

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pean scenarists—Baruti with the French writer Franck Giroud;
Hissa Nsoli with Patrick de Meersman; Pat Masioni with Cécile
Grenier; Hallain Paluku with Benoît Rivière; Li-An with Jean-
David Morvan—and African scenarists with European cartoon-
ists—Ngalle Edimo with Sandrine Martin; Marguerite Abouet
with Clément Oubrerie; Yvan Algabé with Olivier Bramanti.

Comics seem to know no borders, estructuras, or regularity. De este modo
they could lead us to imagine a world similar to the approach
proposed by anthropologist Tim Ingold, “where people live in a
continuous and unlimited landscape which is infinitely varied in
appearance and outlines, and without borders and cracks” (2000).
Contemporary African comics are a cosmopolitan cultural form,
with no clearly defined territory, no cultural link to their country
of origin, conforming to Arjun Appadurai’s model for forms of
globalized mass culture (1996). For this reason they lend them-
selves poorly to oppositions between cultural areas. Their authors
move consciously in a world marked by a transnational fluidity of
people and images and make formal and stylistic choices from a
panoply of ideas which are neither localized nor confined, hecho
up as they are of fragments of B-movies, comics, “picture stories”

(fotoromanzi), Brazilian telenovelas, Japanese manga, Bollywood
films, glossy magazines, reproductions of classic works of art,
street politics (Radio Trottoir), and orality.

At the end of the 1980s, television became the main mass com-
munication medium in Africa. Más tarde, satellite reception brought
with it the global imaginary. It was a foreign invasion, the last in a
long list, after easel painting, photography, theatre, cinema, a diario
papers—and indeed comics themselves. This incoming imagi-
nary was subjected to a complex process of cultural reappropria-
ción. After reworking, the products coming out of the television
system opened doors to new narrative and aesthetic worlds, dis-
tinct from the continent’s search for identity previously carried
out by presenting traditional stories in theater (Epskamp 1987),
radio (Cancel 1986, Bourgault 1995), and school books, y
adopting Senghor’s Négritude in poetry and literature. A genera-
tion of young, urbanized African cartoonists replaced mytho-
logical or historical figures with men and women caught in their
everyday lives.

Formats and stories seen on satellite TV, such as the soap
opera—with settings close to the consumer’s own experience,

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3 godfrey Mwampembwa, aka gado. (tanzania). 1996.
Abunawasi. Nairobi: Sasasema.

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plots involving main characters, a cast of secondary characters,
multiple story lines, and episodes—began to appear in comics:
Le choix du coeur by Désiré Atsain, a series centered on a mid-
dle-class African family published in the Ivorian weekly Gbich!,
and Les K-libres by Simon Mbumbo, published in Planète Jeunes.
There was also movement in the other direction, from the page
to the screen: the eponymous character of Goorgoorlou by Sen-
egalese T.T. Fons (Alphonse Mendy), appeared on Senegalese
television from 2002–2003—480 episodes!—played by the actor
Habib Diop, and Cauphy Gombo di Zed’l by Zohore Lassane
became another series, filmed live, for RTI, the Ivorian TV sta-
ción. The direct relation between different media, disharmonic
yet vital and energetic, reflects how today’s comics seek to be a
medium that enters into the heterogeneous and complex system
of communication.

The dynamism of music likewise influences the creativity and

the plans of these authors. Baruti is a musician and has made
a CD, Ndungu Yangu; Mbumbo is working on a project for a
graphic novel set in the world of African musical show business
(Higo. 6); the satirical magazine Gbich! is about to launch a radio
station, Gbich! FM. As Dady Gonda declares,

I feel the influence of the American comix and the Japanese manga,
movies and music, the dynamics of editing. I don’t think immediately
of images but more of an animated sequence with sound. I want to
put down strong, significant moments on paper.3

This cultural fertilization of the local breeding ground has borne
new fruits: “mutant” comics where we as media scholars can wit-
ness the mutual influences between mass media, street cultures,
and fine arts, and where ordinary readers can see the develop-
ment of authors who have chosen the graphic novel as a way
of meeting the need for supranational, collective communica-

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4 barly baruti and franck giroud (rD
Congo/france). 1997. Eva K.-Tome 2: Amina.
toulon: Soleil productions.

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5 barly baruti and franck giroud (rD Congo/france). 1998. Eva K.-Tome 3:
Traquenard. toulon: Soleil productions.

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6 Simon-pierre Mbumbo. (Cameroon). 3 Drafts for the
project “Music.”

tion with a strong local calling in autobiographical form. Es
the African counterpart to adjustments which the international
production of comics has already undergone in the interaction
between film, television, literature, and new media. This orien-
tation also comes out of specific and continental creative and
publishing processes, including the emptying of political con-
tent and meaning suffered by other comics forms, such as comic
strips created purely for entertainment that run in some daily
papers and magazines.

AfricAn Side Story
The comic in Africa has always been a child of its time. In its
first period, entre 1960 y 1990, comics traditions, de
strips to cartoons and more literary productions, came together
to provide a graphic mirror of the political reality of nation-
building, which in terms of spirit and orientation underpinned
the process of Africanizing comics’ subject matter and stories.

Under the “Suns of Independence” (to cite Ahmadou Kourou-
ma’s classic novel), as the newly independent countries launched
literacy programs, conditions were created that fostered com-
ics drawn by African authors for local readers. These comics
presented traditional African stories handed down by word of
mouth over the years, similar to the popular literature of the
folkloric Picadithi series in Kenya, and also made zealous paral-
lels between the struggle against imperialism and the history of
colonialism: in Angola the anonymous A vitória é certa (1968); en
Cameroon Douala Manga Bell by Joz (1970); in Senegal L’homme
du réfus by A.G. Ngom and S.D. Diop (1978); in Mozambique

Akapwitchi Akaporo by J.P. Borges Coelho (1981); in Madagascar
Ombalahibemaso by Jean Ramamonjisoa (1961) and later Nous
ne voulons rien de blancs … nous avons les nécessaires by Ratsim-
bazafy (1982). Another genre of this period is the politico-hagio-
graphic comic, which pompously celebrated the lives of leaders
of countries freed from colonial domination: Mobutu Sese Seko,
Muammar al-Gaddafi, King Hassan II, Gnassingbé Eyadema,
Léopold Senghor, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Dailies and periodicals created a certain complicity between
local society, the comic, and the artists by publishing strips, auto-
toons, and the first paper heroes in contexts readers could easily
recognize. They took up the tradition of the American “funnies”
in which characters appear in papers on a daily basis, a form
started at the beginning of the twentieth century. Por ejemplo,
in Kinshasa, Sinatra by Sima Lukombo and Apolosa by Boyau
ran in Jeune pour Jeunes; in Zambia, Caption Cartoons by Nef-
tali Sakala in The National Mirror; in Gabon, Bibeng by Achka
and Tita Abessolo by Richard Amvame appeared in L’Union; en
Burkina, Maître Kanaon by Anatole Kiba in Sidiwaya; in Sudan,
Elsyban had Uncle Tungo by Ahderhman and Ahdelrazig; en
Congo Brazzaville, La Semaine africanine had Zoba Moke by
Lokok; in Côte d’Ivoire, Iviore Dimenche and Fraternité Matin
published Folbay by Salia; in Madagascar, Ibonya by Antsanany
ran in the Faranano Gazety; and in South Africa, creators such
as Newell Goba, Dikobe Mogale “Martins”, and Mogorosi Mot-
shumi worked amidst the difficulties of apartheid.

But it was only later, when the introduction (or reintroduc-
ción) of multiparty political systems in the 1990s enabled the

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multiplication of newspapers, that a new generation of artists
arose who were capable of a lively reappraisal of African soci-
ety and politics. This second period, entre 1990 y 2000,
was vital and dynamic, at times even chaotic. Politically, África
saw a transition from “living a lie” to “living the truth”—to use
the expressions adopted by Czech president Vaclav Havel to talk
about another political transformation (Havel 1990 [1978]). Uno
of the consequences of the transition from dictatorial regimes to
democracies was a liberating voice for a free society. For Gado, a
cartoonist on the Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation, the introduc-
tion of a multiparty state “brought greater freedom of expres-
sion” and “injected new life into newspapers, magazines and the
publishing industry.”4

In this decade the traditions of the comics, from the popular
to the more literary, converged to comment on current affairs or
fragments of everyday experience, or took the form of dramatic
and fantastic creations, and comics were a vibrant and popular
art form. At Kinshasa, low-cost, short-lived, locally distributed
comics were started, such as Fula Ngenge, Bulles and Plumes, y
Nkento. They were written in the Lingala, Kikongo, and Tshiluba
languages and were steeped in kinoiseries, the kind of informa-
tion not to be found in daily newspapers, such as gossip, indis-
cretions, and reverence for supernatural causation of events in
everyday life. These comics authors draw using the Franco-Bel-

gian ligne claire narrative style, a choice that is not necessarily
a sign of their desire to adapt to the European-oriented main-
stream. The rapid rate at which global cultural forms are indi-
genized by African comics authors prevents us from applying a
simple center-periphery model to this artistic form.

Desde 1997, the Ivorian satirical weekly Gbich!, containing
a four-page color supplement, has had a press run of between
37,500 y 50,000 copies a week (the leading Côte d’Ivoire daily
newspaper sells 10,000 copies per day). With more than 300
issues published and fifteen comics authors on its staff, Gbich!
has undeniable economic and cultural clout. Reasons for its
success include in-house management (from editorial ideas to
printing); the adoption of street language for local and urban
discourses about women, the city, wealth, and politics; low price
(300 FSFA, or about 25 cents US); y, por supuesto, a successful
gallery of comics characters taken from daily life in Africa, semejante
as Cauphy Gombo, a cynical and awkward businessman, por
Zed’l; Tommy Lapoasses by Illary Simplice; corrupt policeman
Sergent Deux Togo by Bob Kanza; ladies’ man Jo Bleck by Karlos
Guédè Gou; and tough guy Gnamankoudji ZeKinan by Gnakan
(Kovamé Thierry Ghakan).

T.T. Fons (Alphonse Mendy) self-produces his own albums in
an artisanal structure (Atelier Fons). Throughout the amusing
adventures of Goorgoorlou (Higo. 7), he describes the changes in

7 Alphonse Mendy, aka t.t. fons. (Senegal).
2002. “Diek au village,” in Goor-mag 2. Dakar:
Atelier fons.

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8 Conrad botes. (South Africa). 2001. “happy
Krismis,” in Bitterkomix 11. Cape town: bitter-
komix pulp.

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9 Albert tshisuaka, aka tshishi. (rD,Congo). 2006.
Les joyau du Pacifique. bruxelles: Joker editions.

Senegalese society from ground level. Adopting a rich linguis-
tic range that goes from French to “urban speak” (a vernacu-
lar language enriched by mispronunciations in French and a
large number of words borrowed from local Wolof), he depicts
an average Senegalese man who has lost his job thanks to the
World Bank and who walks the streets of Dakar every day try-
ing to make money to get by. Goorgoorlou seem to be respond-
ing to Senegal’s pervasive economic crises. The protagonists are
involved in stories and misfortunes that echo the experience of
the readers. The character becomes engaged in the construction
of a symbolic economy, converting and transforming real eco-
nomic relationships into symbolic ones.

Fons introduces us to an artistic representation very different
from European artists’ creativity, where social relations appear
to follow antagonistic strategies. Through these characters the
artists become witnesses, testifying, accusing, archiving. El
comics mirror a postcolonial world, and they can be read as
the representation of a negation, as a tragic exercise in nonexis-
tence. These representations juxtapose “how we are” (daily life)
with “how we try, yet fail to be” (due to the irreversible absence
of a civil life, revealed by the authors’ criticism of corruption
and inequality in the postcolonial state). Comics are acts of

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moral protest which, by putting popular indignation down on
paper, show the impossibility of a different way of life. Ellos
represent a complex negation in which the artist recognizes
the bare truth that life under a regime of violence is hallucina-
conservador, as in Happy Krismis by Conrad Botes (Higo. 8). The artists
show what is real (violence, the domination of one person or
group over another, the erosion of civil liberties and freedom)
through what is imaginary.

Thus the artist assumes the role of witness and judge on an
ethical level as he creates a credible “bridge” linking his per-
sonal need for truth, victims’ thirst for justice, and public space.
This is the case of South African Paddy Bouma’s The Invisible
People (1999). The story connects an episode of daily life to the
shared values of the conservative community in which he grew
up as the child of one of the founders of the National Party, y
also reflects the complex situation of denying a black servant
his right to identity.

In a dialogue between what is visible (where there are wit-

nesses to the poverty, denial of human rights, etc.) and invisible
(an everyday, normal life without violence), these documents
reveal the alienation of existence and the existence of demonic
forces rooted in suffering. They also elicit insane laughter, reír-
ter mixed with the suffering of Edward Saïd’s “undocumented
persons” in the bureaucratic and historic sense (Saïd 1993). Nosotros
are in the heterogeneous zone between testimony and judgment
that Jacques Derrida and Bernard Speigler (1997) observed in
another modern medium, television.

from AfricA to europe (And bAck?)
In writing their stories, African comics artists can draw on
recognizable global art forms; but the contents are very often
stories of harsh everyday life. As the artist Barly Baruti puts it,
“In Africa, readers expect the authors to denounce all truth that
is hidden away.”5

A generation of comics artists has seen this form of violence
in ordinary life and the deconstruction of civil life as a political

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10 olivier bramanti and Yvan Alagbé. (france/togo). 2004. Qui a connu le feu. Anderlecht/Montreuil: fremok.

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11 Serge huo-Chao-Si and
Appollo. (réunion/france).
2003. La Grippe Coloniale.
paris: Vents d’ouest.

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subject and pointed the finger at those bearing political respon-
sibility. They exercise moral and political resistance against
manipulated and denied human rights, against the word that
is sacrificed in disinformation, propaganda, and invention and
turned into rhetorical dust by autocrats who brook no dissent.

Censorship—whether by the government or self-imposed—
made it “extremely difficult for artists to be critical and creative
towards the dominant élite. The fear of repercussions limited
creativity,” testifies Al’Mata (Alain Mata Mamengi, Democratic
Republic of Congo),6 who managed to escape arrest by Mobutu
Sese Seko’s police for his caricature of the politician. Subject to
political pressure, some artists are unable to find an outlet for
their more “difficult” work. This the case for Timpous (Timp-
ousga Kaboré) from Burkina Faso, who has kept his draw-
ings about the 1998 assassination of journalist Norbert Zongo
in a drawer for years. A kind of self-censorship takes hold and
becomes “a general rule all over, due to the many government
and social taboos, due to terrorism by groups of vigilantes, y
the strict relationship between newspapers, the world of busi-
ness, and the government” (Prestado 1997:4).

In these cases, one solution is to work abroad. This is the path

taken by Nigerian Tayo Fatunla, who lives and works in London.
“Editors were censoring my work many times in the past. Uno
work involved the atrocious acts committed on journalists by the
Nigerian government under General Sani Abacha. Fearing repri-
sals, my editor prohibited publication of the stories, so I sent
them to London to be published in a pan-African monthly,” he
recounts.7 This is also the case for Eric Salla, who saw his draw-
ings destroyed by the police and has since been granted political
asylum in The Netherlands.8 Recently, many other comics art-
istas, such as Al’Mata, Pat Masioni and Fifi Mukuna, Titi Faustin,
Albert Tshitshi (Higo. 9), and Ngumire, tired of the difficult work-
ing conditions in their home countries, have asked for political
asylum in Europe. For all of them Europe provides opportunities
to keep up to date artistically and to publish their work.

Cameroonian storyteller Christophe N’Galle Edimo, who lives
in France, has claimed that many African artists end up sell-
ing out when they reach the West as they make short-sighted
attempts to become marketable: “Some choose to copy the style
the Europeans use when they draw Africans, and settle for rosy
topics that avoid political or tribal issues.”9 I disagree. The orien-
tation of comics created in the African diaspora does not relate

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12 Serge huo-Chao-Si and Appollo.
(réunion/france). 2003. La Grippe Colo-
niale. paris: Vents d’ouest.

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to the cultural tradition of Africa but rather to a long-term strat-
egy for comics in which hybrid style, cultural exchange, y
mixing are the modalities that currently define this art—and art
in general—as something global and universal.

For some African authors living in the diaspora, Europa
becomes a territory to venture across, a place where they can
engage with European masters. It also provides a new phase of
artistic creativity, where comics productions and individual paths
gradually develop in search of previously marginalized and out-
of-frame existential dimensions, not visible in the details of the
authors’ daily lives—family and social ties, political activities, etc..
New contacts with the world of publishing and the ambitious

narrative projects of a new artistic phase explain the period of
successes that started in 2003. The Internet now allows some
of these authors to manage their intellectual property rights
directly on an international scale. The model of the traditional
comics industry, with its strategic national dimension and low
horizontal integration (creativity–production–publishing) tiene
been shattered, and artists gather the fruits of their own activity
when they are published for the first time by European publish-
ing houses that support the development of artistic projects with
complex narrative frameworks. The trend is away from an age in
which comics were confined to daily papers and magazines to
one founded on the centrality of the book, and the path chosen

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13 Anton Kannemeyer, aka Joe Dog. (South Africa).
1996. “lag-lag,” in Lag-Lag. pretoria: bitterkomix
pulp.

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is that of the graphic novel: stories planned as complete novels.

This rising generation of African comic-book artists is gaining
a growing fan base. Ivorian Gilbert Groud published Magie noire
for the leading French publisher Albin Michel (2003), South
African Karlien de Villiers published Meine Mutter war eine
schöne Frau in German for a Swiss publisher (Edition Moderne,
2005), and Ivorian Faustin Titi published Une éternité à Tanger
for the Italian publisher Lai Momo (2005). Recientemente, South Afri-
can Joe Daly published Scrublands for the leading American
publisher Fantagraphics (2006). Congolese Pat Masioni’s his-
tory of genocide, Rwanda 1994: Descente en enfer (Albin Michel,
2005), Congolese Hallain Paluku’s Missy (Boîte à bulles, 2006),
Cameroonian Biyong Djehouty’s Soundjata, la bataille de Kirina
(Menaibuc, 2004), Ivorian scenarist Marguerite Aboue’s Aya
de Yopougon (Gallimard, 2005), Yvan Alagbé’s Nègres jaunes
(Amok, 2002) and Olivier Bramanti’s Qui a connu le feu (Amok/
Fremok, 2004; Higo. 10) are equally accomplished works. La bal-

lade au bout du monde: Les pierres levées (Glénat, 2003), by the
Mauritius artist Man Keong Laval NG was one of the best-selling
French comic books in 2003.

Their comics have also started to win prizes at prestigious
international festivals. A case in point is Marguerite Abouet,
the first African comics artist to be awarded a prize at the most
important European comics festival, the Festival International
de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême. La Grippe Coloniale by Serge
Huo-Chao-Si and Appollo (Vents d’Ouest, 2003; Figs. 11–12) era
awarded the 2003 Prix de la Critique by the Association des Cri-
tiques et Journalistes de Bande Dessinée. South African cartoon-
ist Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro) received the 2005 Prince Claus
Foundation Principal Award. These authors see the graphic
novel as an attempt to meet the need for supranational, colectivo
communication between themselves and their readers—both
African and European—with a strong local (African) tendency
towards comics using the register of the everyday, autobiogra-

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14 Conrad botes. (South Africa). 2001. “Cover,” in The
Best of Bitterkomix. Cape town: bitterkomix pulp.

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phy, and the documentary.

A new generation of white South African authors has emerged
that works for an idea of the art comic and graphic and narra-
tive experimentation where the boundaries between art, diseño,
cómic, and narrative become blurred. Being part of this new
generation means developing a self-critical reflection which
stages an intimate and personal interior exploration—and expia-
tion—of one’s own identity. This interior exploration is not like
walking around a garden. Bastante, it is like coming and going
from a burning home to which, against one’s better judgment,
one returns again and again to try and save something from the
flames: photo albums, gente, memories. For these artists the
burning house of the fathers—their identity—is contaminated
by a past for which they feel no nostalgia, and which they try
to come to terms with through a visual account in the form of a
story told within a wider historical fable, the story of the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

In its attempt to found a nation on shared memory, the TRC
put forward the idea of a transitional justice (Teitel 2002), a post-
modern form of justice through the construction of a narrative. Como
an unintended outcome of their actions, everything has become
“discourse”: it is “as if ” reconciliation had happened, “as if ” the
truth had been revealed, and this radically modifies reality. Media

coverage of the hearings generated a performance made up of tes-
timony and memory which created an emotionally laden space.
In this context, Anton Kannemeyer (Higo. 13) and Conrad Botes
(founders of Bitterkomix magazine; Higo. 14), Paddy Bouma, Karlien
de Villers (Higo. 15), and N.D. Mazin walk a tightrope between the
truth of the facts and emotional truth, two worlds which were
connected because apartheid touched the lives of everybody and
everybody had a story to tell. They do so out of a sense of moral
decency, in order to denounce the hypocrisy of an Afrikaner
world which allowed the violations of human rights perpetrated
by a brutal political system, but for which these artists—like many
other South African citizens—do not feel personally responsible.
What these artists produce is not only art, it is memory that has
been collectively preserved through an artistic language that is
capable of creating an interactive social context because they share
their personal experiences with their readers, who recognize them
both historically and politically. All look backwards, towards the
absurdity of “normal” life in apartheid South Africa, in order to
look forward. Speaking with Karlien de Villers, one understands
that her childhood in the 1980s

is not a place one can photograph or visit, but which is captured with
emotion. I can evoke it like a spirit, and share it … Soon after I started
work on the story [the autobiographical graphic novel Meine Mutter

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war eine schöne Frau), I realized that delving into the recent South
African past was bound to be fraught with more ambivalence than I
bargained for. Although my main objective was and still is to make
sense of the events surrounding the untimely death of my mother in
1987, it soon became clear to me that salvaging childhood memories
from a white South African past not only involved saving my own little
story from drowning. During the Apartheid years any private suburban
drama took place against the backdrop of a very absurd and grotesque
political situation. All memories of personal pain, joy and wonder are
entangled with the acceptance of a deeply divided, turbulent society.10

AfricAn WAve
The African comic is a compact medium whose transforma-
tive waves involve the elements which constituted it—authors,
idioma, and consumption—in every geographical area. As with
the authors who emigrated to Europe, those who remained in
Africa also deal with the new factors that involve the comic as a
medio, en otras palabras, the horizontal integration of the indus-
trial dimension determined by the processes of digitalization
and the fluidity of the expressive dimension facilitated by global-
ización. They are forced to reconfigure the relationship between
the two dimensions, linking them up or channeling them into

pockets of self-production with specific images and forms.

Digitalization transforms some phases of the production cycle.
The techniques of digital coloring replace traditional typograph-
ical methods and results in spectacular artistic effects, eficiencia,
and cost-saving. This facilitates self-production and makes it eas-
ier to stay on the market, as is the case with Gbich!, dónde 90% de
the horizontal process (creativity–production–publishing–print-
En g) is carried out in premises in Marcory. The new technological
phase has a different effect on the other side of comics: the plan-
y. The unpublished works by young authors in their twenties
that I know of—Mombili, Gonda, Chrisany—express an imagi-
nary connected to the audiovisual world. For them, “Technology
is just a support. Using computer graphics to combine graphical
expression with motion capture to keep realistic movements is
the way to go.” Proto-projects of future digital, audiovisual prod-
ucts may be impossible today, “but tomorrow, who knows.”11

At the other end is self-production. As with African popular
fiction analyzed by Stephanie Newell (2002), comics throughout
Africa are published on local printing presses and distributed
within the locality in a process overseen by the artists them-
selves. The aim in such small-scale publishing is economy and

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15 Karlien de Villers. (South Africa). 2005. “Sara. A
Memory from a Suburban Childhood, circa 1978,” in Bit-
ter-jusi. Stellenbosh/Capetown: bitterkomix and i-Jusi.

capillar distribution in city markets. In Kinshasa, Mfumu’Eto
(Mfumu’Eto Nkou-Ntoula) sees himself as a painter and for
this reason draws comics with a fine pencil. He is also an author
with a knack for local storytelling (the kinoiseires) and with
a good ear for pulp stories. His pamphlets, very often virulent
attacks against the political powers-that-be, inspired by cultural
traditions and fed by urban culture through an almost dream-
like mixture of religion, irony, and popular mythologies, are of
immediate interest to the people. His little comic books are writ-
ten in Lingala, made on low-quality paper, self-produced using
stencils and photocopying machines, and distributed informally
in Kinshasa’s market place (Higo. 19). They circulate within the
narrow market defined by the local language and culture. En esto
way, Mfumo’Eto occupies a tangential position in relation to the
world of the comic. In Dakar, Lamb Ji by Kabs and in Mada-
gascar, the satirical magazine Ngah, edited by the artist Didier
Mada BD (Didier Randriamanantena), is published in the local
Malagasy language and sells 40,000 copies weekly. These are all
expressions of this process of vernacularization of the rhythms,
tensions, and narrative conventions which can happen in Africa
only in comics, a low-cost medium that is easy to serialize. Como
the comics artist Barly Baruti explains, “Young people who pub-
lish in self-produced reviews can express themselves better and
can touch upon many more original subjects.”12 At present the
(short-lived and low-cost) “self-produced reviews” make it pos-
sible for artists to publish, but the difficulties of independent
publishing in Africa should not be minimized. African comic-
book artists publish their works in countries where the cost of
paper and the poverty of the potential readership can be insur-
mountable obstacles.

When I realized that among the ten winners of the “Vues
d’Afrique” competition held at the 33rd Festival d’Angoulême
(Francia) in January 2006, seven were completely unknown to
me despite the fact that I have contributed to staging three exhi-
bitions of African authors and co-edited a series of ten African
comic books, I tried to find an explanation for this phenomenon
by looking at access to the market by African comics authors.

De hecho, the labor market of these artists is unstable and sub-
ject to seismic changes. New talent bursts on the scene and then
quits the profession equally quickly. The reasons for this lie in
the fact that comic art is a field that taps into the broad interface
that exists in Africa today between supportive social networks
and entrepreneurial practices, which are only partly governed
by market relations. In a continent marked by disquieting pro-
cesses of urbanization, where settlement is disproportionate to
the available resources, the African citizen engages in complex
relations between labor markets, cultural identity, and sociabil-
idad, factors that have increasingly turned the towns and cities of
Africa into spaces of invention (Repetti 2002). Comics artists

belong to this labor market like every other African worker and
citizen. Even when an author enjoys popular success, his situ-
ation is more characteristic of work with intermittent wages,
alternately starting and stopping, subject to unsteadiness, bajo
and irregular production, cash and publication problems, bajo
returns on invested capitals, and uncertain profits.

Although this art form is a long way from a deep crisis, African
comics artists still face an uphill battle for survival. Supportive
social networks are the first resources necessary for promot-
ing comic books. Many comics artists have joined together in
associations whose main objective is the promotion of the art of
comics through festivals, publicaciones, and mass media. Alguno
examples are Souimanga in Madagascar, set up under the direc-
tion of Alban Ramiandrisoa-Ratsivalaka and Didier Randria-
manantena; Emerald Press in Nigeria; Sisma Comics in Angola;
PACT, the Popular Association of Cartoonists in Tanzania; BD
Boom in Gabon; and Tache d’Enche in Côte d’Ivoire, which set
up the pan-African Festival Coco-Bulles.

En 1990 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Barly
Baruti started the Atelier de création, recherche et initiation à
l’art (ACRIA), which has now become a school for comics artists.
In South Africa, there is Mamba Comics under the direction of
ND Mazin (Andy Mason). Two associations have also been set
up in Europe by comics artists of the diaspora: L’Afrique Dessi-
née, run by Christophe N’Galle Edimo in Paris, and Belgium’s
Afro-Bulles. The associations’ activities encourage platforms
for artists to exchange ideas, experiencia, redes, and survival
strategies in the face of difficult working conditions. The truth of
the matter is, sin embargo, that the associations seem to lessen pro-
fessional solidarity and the readers’ appreciation of the talents
of their artists and give more priority to the search for partner-
ships with international institutions such as the UN, UNESCO,
and the EU; ONG; and cultural agencies such as Agence Inter-
gouvernamentale de la Francophonie. They ask for international
funding with a growing interest because comics need budget
and managerial capacity to survive in the difficult balancing act
between cost and sales.

The French aid agency Cooperation Française has given sup-
port to festivals and comics production in all the Francophone
countries. Examples include collective albums such as Sary
Gasy and Les jeux sont faits in Madagascar; the review Explose
la Capote and the comic book Koulou chez les Bantu (1998) en
Gabon. Two editions of the Festival Coco-Bulles (2001, 2003)
in Côte d’Ivoire and the Afro-Bulles exhibition at the Festival
d’Angoulême 2005 were supported by the Agence intergouver-
nementale de la Francophonie. Belgian aid agencies entirely
financed the publication of the story Les Couleurs de la Mémoire
by Hector Sonon (Benin) in Cotonou ‘s magazine Interfaces from
Noviembre 1996 a julio 1997.

Cost is the most significant consideration in determining the
success of comics in Africa, where even the salaried elite simply
cannot afford to buy comics on a regular basis. But economic
factors are only part of the problem. More insidious and more
recent is the problem of relations with international cultural
operadores. Today African comics occupy a more decentralized
position with respect to international nongovernmental cultural
operadores, which are interested in this low-cost medium and pro-

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16 Mfumu’eto. (rD Congo). 1996. Le bébé misterieux.
Kinshasa: self-production.

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17 Miagotar Japeth (Cameroon).
2004. “l’ingratitude”. unpublished.

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mote activities in favor of African comics. Examples are the Fes-
tival International de la Caricature et de l’Humour de Yaoundé
(FESCARY), desde 1999 in Cameroon, supported by Association
ICCNET, and Proculture (a cultural program organized by the
European Development Fund); A l’Ombre du Baobab (2001) sup-
ported by the French NGO Equilibres et Populations; the Vues
d’Afrique competition (2006) sponsored by the French Ministry
of Foreign Affairs; the Africa Comics competition (2003, 2004,
y 2006) and the Manifesta! competition (2006), both sup-
ported by the Africa e Mediterraneo Association.

De hecho, the most commonly adopted formulas—pan-African
or national competitions where entrance is free but only the win-
ners are paid, and the selection of artworks for the creation of

traveling exhibitions in Africa and/or Western developed coun-
tries—do not resolve the problems faced by comics artists. En efecto,
the joint action of comics artists and cultural promoters, a pesar de
success with the public and fund-raising using the formula of
competition plus traveling exhibition, does not seem to give the
artists any direct and lasting advantage. The exhibitions do not
give the exhibited artists an economic advantage, nor is artists’
información, such as e-mail addresses and web sites, available to
encourage the public to enter into direct contact with them. El
catalogues are merely adjuncts to exhibitions and are only half-
heartedly put on the market, and even so, they provide data about
the organizers of the exhibition only, and no royalties are given to
the authors. Finalmente, these competitions do not reflect the state of

suMMer 2007 african arts | 33

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18 Yvan Alagbé. (france/
togo).1998. “Djihad” in Algérie, la
douleur et le mal. Montreuil: Amok.

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the art because they are also open to nonprofessional and student
artists; por lo tanto, successful authors hardly ever take part—and if
they do, they only exhibit their less important works.

A pesar de la 15,000 copies of a collective album titled A l’Ombre
du Baobab and in spite of the financial assistance to Central Afri-
can countries from the European Development Fund (Cultural
Programme “Proculture 2001/2203”), everyday difficulties con-
tinue to force many comics artists to abandon their careers.

A poStcArd from AfricA
Asimba Bathy, who lives in Kinshasa, refutes the African comics
label because he belongs to the international ligne claire movement
in comics. Para él, the issue is clear-cut: This equivalence serves
to dehistoricize African creativity, and to call the comics “African”
simply exemplifies the Western will to keep artists of African ori-
gin from participating fully in the contemporary art scene.13

This “African Wave” is of great interest to scholars, especially
given its primary concern with the emergence of postcolonial
estados. These narratives are both fiction and cultural artifacts pro-

duced against the background of transformations in both Afri-
can society and the international media. Comics art in Africa
demonstrate the inadequacy of center-periphery models of cul-
tural transmission, es decir. the movement from a hegemonic interna-
tional comic art to local-level African creativity which is naïve,
unofficial, and popular.

With the sole exception of the vernacularized comics of
Mfumo’Eto and others, all these artists propose an expressive,
modern language that is not traditionally African. The “African
Wave” is part of the contemporary international comics scene
and shows many of the deep transformations that have affected
the language and the publishing forms of this medium. In a labor
market that is difficult of access and marked by harsh political
condiciones, in an uncomfortable everyday life, this is no small
intellectual endeavor.

We are no longer able to interpret the all the signs contained
in these stories but we know they come from both near and far.
They bring us into direct contact with the meaning of cultural
globalization: traditions that merge together and continue to

34 | african arts suMMer 2007

CMYK p34

09293 • 20702419

existir, a multiethnic market of paradoxically standard objects,
and an age which constantly transforms and amalgamates.

There is a question that comics artists themselves pose about
the classification of their art as “African” comics: Are they not
simply comics? If not only authors but also readers start to ask
this question, that will show that a universal dimension of com-
munication has certainly been achieved.

Massimo Repetti is an Italian cultural anthropologist whose research
interests include social implications of African artistic expression (incluir-
ing comics) and urban modernity. He has curated three pan-African exhi-
bitions of comics: “Matite Africane” (2001) and “Africa Comics” (2002,
2003), is consultant for the Lambiek Comiclopedia based in the Nether-
lands, and is co-editor (with Andrea Marchesini Reggiani) of the comic
series Africa Comics. 3.14@fastwebnet.it

Notas

1 The 17th International Comics Festival in

Amadora, Portugal, October 20–November 5, 2006; el
Africa Comics Exhibition, Noviembre 15, 2006–March
18, 2007, at Studio Museum in Harlem, Nueva York; el
16th Salon de la BD de Roumanie, Bucharest, Octubre
19–22, 2006; the 33rd Festival international de la bande
dessinée, May 8–June 5, 2006 in Dakar and January
26–29 in Angoulême, Francia.

I should make it clear that I am discussing
African comics only, a subset of African cartooning as a
entero. My thinking about African comics has benefitted
from my reading of Achille Mbembe (1992, 1997) en
this broader topic.

3 Dady Gonda, personal communication, Primavera

2001.

4 Gado, personal communication, Primavera 2001.
5
2003.

Barly Baruti, personal communication, Verano

6 Al’Mata, personal communication, Verano

2004.

7 Tayo Fatunla, personal communication, Primavera

2002.
8
2006.

Eric Salla, personal communication, Otoño

9 Christophe N’Galle Edimo, personal communi-

catión, Invierno 2004.

10 Karlien de Villers, personal communication,

Otoño 2005.

11 Dady Gonda, personal communication,

Otoño 2006.

12 Barly Baruti, personal communication, Primavera

2003.

13 Asimba Bathy, personal communication, Sum-

mer 2006.

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