Alphabet of Democracy by Anton Kannemeyer

Published by Jacana | 2010, Softcover, 72 pages, full page single panel illustrations, large format, 28 cms x 28 cms, condition: as new.

Anton Kannemeyer's Alphabet of Democracy is an illustrated A to Z guide to the absurdities of life in the democratic South Africa. Kannemeyer subverts the myth of the 'rainbow nation' with acute humour and critique, dissecting the issues, events and personalities that confound the country in this series of satirical drawings and prints.

Anton Kannemeyer (born 1967) is a South African comics artist, who sometimes goes by the pseudonym Joe Dog. His works challenge the rigid image of Afrikaners promoted under Apartheid, and depict Afrikaners having nasty sex and mangling their Afrikaans. X is for Xenophobia, part of his "Alphabet of Democracy", depicts Ernesto Nhamwavane, a Mozambican immigrant who was burnt alive in Johannesburg in 2008. Some of Kannemeyer's works deal with the issues of race relations and colonialism, by appropriating the style of Hergess comics, namely from Tintin in the Congo. In "Pappa in Afrika", Tintin becomes a white African, depicted either as a white liberal or as a racist white imperialist in Africa. In this stereotyped satire, the whites are superior, literate and civilised, and the blacks are savage and dumb.