This Cartoon Is a Satire: Cartoons as

Critical Entertainment and Resistance

in Ghana’s Fourth Republic
Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

A
“ nadan” is a prominent Ghanaian daily cartoonist whose works are exclu-
sively published at ghanaweb.com. Aside from this role, he is now the
creative director of Wobete Kpa, a Ghanaian monthly satirical newspaper
that began circulating in early 2016. In 2013, the artist received death
threats as a response to one of his cartoons (figure 1). The piece satirized the practice
of slaughtering goats and cows for meat during the celebration of Eid Mubarak, a
Muslim festival. Immediately following that incident, Anadan’s editor tagged the
artist’s page with “Disclaimer: This cartoon is a satire.” In my interview with the artist
regarding the disclaimer, he explained that the motive for the explicit declaration
was twofold: first, to forestall future intimidations, and second, to signal clearly to
audiences that the cartoons are for “mere entertainment.”1 This view on the sheer
entertainment value of the cartoons enunciates common Ghanaian framings
of such popular art forms in general as “concert.” This local term indexes such
formats as “just for laughs” and therefore should be situated outside the “purview
of serious interrogation.”2 Here, the underpinning implicit assumption posits that
entertainment and popular culture are at odds with meaningful critiques and the
realm of resistance. However, through my research on Ghanaian popular cultural
productions such as political hip life music and photo-shopped images, it is clear

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134 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

FIGURE 1. Anadan, “Eid Mubarak.” Courtesy of the artist.

such formats equally partake in national key sociopolitical debates in their own
unique ways.3
In this chapter, I draw from my field insights to concretely reject such a myopic
vision of political cartoons as purely for amusement purposes and rather explore
them from two expansive analytical frameworks: critical entertainment and resis-
tance. I understand cartoons as critical entertainment to mean that beyond their
humor, they also articulate unique and critically divergent viewpoints on a wide
range of important issues. As well, I deploy Wendy Willems and Ebenezer Obadare’s
(2014) notion of resistance, situated within broader democratic practices of
ordinary citizens’ participation in critical national discussions, to explore cartoons’
embedded arguments not as clandestine critiques behind dictatorial political power
but as instances of definite routine practices of “grassroots civic mobilization.”4
Through the analytical lens of critical entertainment, first, I argue that cartoons,
unlike literature and art cinema, which are far often less localized and far less rooted
in the social life of any one community, offer a legitimately unique kind of criticism.
Specifically, such critiques provide rapid, widely disseminated, and locally legible
responses to unfolding events. Second, I take the critical entertainment dimension
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 135

of cartoons to mean that they are sui generis, in terms of how cartoonists go beyond
conventional cartoon stylistics, to situate their works within Ghanaian sociopolitical
experiences and local communicative aesthetics. In doing so, they simultaneously
entertain audiences and articulate complementary insights into key sociopolitical
matters in ways that are locally meaningful to their audiences. And it is from
within such experiences and local communication ethos that audiences are able
to relate and tap into the cartoons’ embedded meanings. Thus the cartoons truly
reflect a specific Ghanaian communicative practice. Last, the critical entertainment
dimension takes the cartoons as a visual historical archive that preserves aspects
of Ghana’s past.
The conceptualization of the cartoons as a form of resistance is informed
by Willems and Obadare’s innovative approach to “agency” and “resistance” in
contemporary Africa. These scholars, theorizing power as “dialogically produced in
the interaction between state and society,”5 point out the entangled relationships
between rulers and citizens. From this perspective, they argue for embracing a
more holistic conceptual framework that does not take for granted the deeply
knotted interaction of domination and resistance. This nonbinary rethinking of
“agency” and “resistance” frees us to actually explore the workings of power beyond
normative “protest practices,” such as hunger strikes and burning state property,
to include culturally accepted modes of resistance such as “songs of abuse”6 that
are normally used by the less privileged in society for clandestine critique of
undemocratic regimes.7
Guided by this perspective, I take the cartoons’ thematic concerns as part of
critical discussions in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. This framing allows us to explore the
cartoons not as “resisting” the state (as under dictatorial regimes) but as alternative
media formats that enable “citizens . . . [to] receive information on political affairs
[as well as] contest [certain positions of] political elites.”8 Here, the power dynamics
between citizens and state is not top-down, where those at the apex brazenly enact
their (ill) wishes while those at the base operate through “hidden transcripts.” In
situating this chapter within such a dynamic framework, this research joins nascent
work in African media studies that calls for a deeper “understanding of the contested
and incomplete ways in which power, politics and resistance are encountered and
projected.”9 Furthermore, this chapter contributes to an emergent body of work
on political cartoons and civic agency in Africa10 aimed at broadening our holistic
understanding of state-society relations beyond the focus on formal organizations
in civil society.11
136 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

I also use a critical discourse studies analytical lens to explore the cartoons. The
explicit sociopolitical stance of this approach is useful to investigate how unequal
power relations are “resisted by text and talk in the social and political contexts.”12
I complement this perspective with investigating the cartoons within Ghanaian
sociocultural communicative practices and values through which people interact
with others as well as make sense of their world.13 I situate these perspectives within
an approach to media that recognizes the larger sociopolitical and cultural milieu
from which these cartoons emerge.14
In the first section, I initially situate my exploration of these Ghanaian cartoons
within the larger field of cartooning in Africa. I then thematically explore the works
of Anadan as “critical entertainment” and The Black Narrator from the perspective
of “resistance.” In doing so, I am certainly aware that placing the discussion within
such a superficially binary paradigm opposing critical entertainment and resistance
breaks down once we investigate the interface between these concepts within the
artists’ cartoons. However, the point of doing so is to emphasize how artists use
varying communicative resources to realize their artistic visions. I conclude by
making clear how the analysis of cartoons from the angles of “critical entertainment”
and as “resistance” allows us to better appreciate them as what Tejumola Olaniyan
calls “foundationally humanist art.”15 Here the cartoons not only aim at exposing
Ghanaian social inequities and foibles but also implicitly encourage the creation
of a just Ghanaian social environment.

Ghanaian Cartoons and Cartooning in Africa

The history of cartooning in Ghana, as well as the genre’s entanglement with key
sociopolitical debates, has been slow to receive scholarly attention.16 However,
what is intriguing about this observation is the existence of extensive evidence to
show political cartoon practice and its thematic focus on sociopolitical concerns
in the country, at least beginning from 1957. Furthermore, within Ghana’s current
Fourth Republic, there is a clear surge in cartooning in contrast with other epochs
in the country’s political history. This situation clearly indicates that, compared to
other African contexts (as discussed below), we need more focused research on
Ghanaian cartoons.
In contrast to the relative lack of research on cartoons in Ghana, there is a strong
research tradition on cartooning in some other African countries. For illustrative
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 137

purposes, I briefly discuss some of these works to highlight their thematic foci. For
example, for Cameroon, Achille Mbembe and Francis Nyamnjoh show that cartoons
do not engender frontal resistance to authoritarian acts, although they foment seeds
of gradual defiance to political power abuses. Lyombe Eko’s work on cartoons from
Senegal, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, and Kenya demonstrates how cartoonists from
these countries subversively reappropriate animal symbols of African leaders to
satirize their power excesses, while his more recent work on selected cartoonists
explores one of the ways in which they avoid censorship by putting their work on
the Internet.17
Willems’s research on the Zimbabwean comic strip Chikwama highlights how
“postcolonial laughter does not always address those in power, but also how humor
may point fingers at those subject to power in an attempt to make readers cope with
the tragic events unfolding around them.” Andy Mason and Klaus Dodds examine
varying facets of the work of Zapiro, one of South Africa’s eminent cartoonists. As
Daniel Hammett observes, Mason demonstrates how Zapiro’s “cartoons can be
understood not simply as windows upon a particular moment but as comprising a
narrative or commentary on the processes of democratization and societal change.”
On the other hand, Dodds shows how Zapiro’s cartoons critically engage with the
“spatialities of power and governance in the post-colonial and post-apartheid era.”
Peter Vale’s work on a “century of cartoons” gives visual evidence of comic artists’
perspectives on South Africa’s relations with the region.18
This chapter, focusing on Anadan and The Black Narrator, aims at widening the
current critical scholarship on political cartoons in Ghana in particular and Africa
in general. Thus, the discussions contribute to enlarging the scant literature on
popular media discourses and their engagements with sociopolitical issues under
Ghana’s Fourth Republic.19
In the next section, I examine the cartoons of Anadan and The Black Narrator
as critical entertainment and resistance, respectively. I chose to examine the works
of these two artists because of how their works cumulatively “derive their power
from sheer intellectual elegance, and a robust play on text that challenges readers
to look beneath the façade in unraveling the conundrum of their messages.”20
138 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

Anadan’s Cartoons as Critical Entertainment

In exploring Anadan’s cartoons as critical entertainment, I focus on the artist’s

alternative views on unethical practices around undeserved academic grades
(presumably, in some Ghanaians universities) and recruitment practices within
the Ghana Police Service. In doing so, I show how the artist’s work not only aims
to entertain audiences but also, and more important, to critique and offer different
positions on sensitive sociopolitical Ghanaian issues. I tease out Anadan’s use of
aspects of Ghanaian popular communication to highlight how such language
use underscores the uniqueness of Ghanaian cultural and political experiences
with cartoons. Ultimately, I make the case that through such strategies, the artist’s
re-presentation of Ghanaian sociopolitical matters visually preserves these issues
for posterity.
I should note that the cartoons in this chapter have never been published.
These cartoons, four in total, of which I discuss two, are on the theme of corruption.
According to the artist, his publisher refused to issue the cartoons because of
one key reason: the cartoons’ thematic resonance with a recent explosive bribery
scandal in Ghana’s judiciary that has arguably rocked the foundations of Ghana’s
democracy. Anas Aremeyaw Anas, the key figure in this explosive investigation, in
tandem with his private investigation agency, tigereyepi, clandestinely executed
this inquiry. In a documentary about the investigation, Ghana in the Eyes of God,
we observe thirty-four judges and over 100 court officials taking various forms of
bribes to influence cases.
Anadan’s set of cartoons, titled Anas Is Watching, focuses on corruption in
various Ghanaian sectors. According to the cartoonist, their inspiration comes
from Anas’s work concerning the judges. I have not been able to interview Anadan’s
publisher regarding his reasons for rejecting this particular set of cartoons. However,
I surmise that, as a non-Ghanaian businessman living in the country, the refusal to
publish these cartoons might be due to his fear of retaliation against his business
from colleagues of the affected judges.
It should be noted that this “in-house censorship” is not reflective of a prevailing
suppression of free speech in the country. Beginning from 1992, Ghana boasts of a
robust press freedom. A test of the above is evident in a 2010 Ghana High Court case
of E. T. Mensah v. Daily Guide, now a legal precedent, which shields cartoonists from
politicians who crave to stifle such artists through legal threats such as defamation.
Furthermore, in a recent case concerning the Chinese government, one witnesses
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 139

complete official disinterest in media censorship, especially as related to popular

visual satire. Thus, in April 2017 the Chinese Mission, commenting on the issue of
Chinese illegal mining in Ghana, virtually threatened Accra that it should not “pay
due attention to . . . a number of distorted or biased reports and stories on Chinese
people, especially some . . . cartoons that are defaming Chinese leaders and senior
officials.” This subtle hint at cartoon censorship came on the heels of satirist Bright
Ackwerh’s caricature entitled “We Dey Beg” (figure 2), which was widely circulated
on social media sites.
Bright Ackwerh’s piece seems seriously to indict the Chinese government for its
sole interest in Ghana’s gold resources, which are exchanged for polluted water as
part of China’s citizens’ illegal mining activities. In spite of the Mission’s alarm about
such cartoons (with the suggestion of their censorship), Accra has not responded

FIGURE 2. Bright Ackwerh, “We Dey Beg.” Courtesy of the artist.

140 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

FIGURE 3. Bright Ackwerh, “Them Threaten.” Courtesy of the artist.

to the suggested clampdown on such cartoons. The government’s silence to the

Chinese government’s “hinted censorship request” is quite significant, especially
in light of the subsequent release of another related work by the cartoonist (figure
3) entitled “Them Threaten,” which further critiques the Mission’s public posturing
on the matter.
The above explication demonstrates two things: first, in contemporary Ghana,
sociopolitical free speech is entrenched; and second, Anadan’s censorship of his
cartoons was an aberration of the norm in the larger Ghanaian context.
One key reason justifying my use of these cartoons is to give them the needed
visibility and explore their respective embedded core messages, which are associ-
ated with principled work tenets. These precepts resonate with important ethical
ideals and practices currently pursued at certain Ghanaian institutions of higher
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 141

learning such as Ashesi University College (AUC). For example, at AUC, where I
teach, I have observed several instances of the students’ honor code in practice
where students do not cheat in exams despite the absence of an invigilator.
The second reason relates to the critical edge of these works in comparison with
the gamut of Anadan’s work for ghanaweb.com from 2013 to 2015. These previous
cartoons, most drawing their titles from actual news items, visualize such news
stories in newspapers and on television. However, with the series Anas Is Watching,
the artist creatively weaves his alternative visions against the backdrop of Anas’s
bribery exposé. The goal is to subtly but forcefully offer his version of a societal
ideal of ethical practices, which currently seem absent in some public universities,
the judiciary, and the church. Such an ideal is in consonance with Anas’s public
pronouncement about his work, which is to usher a principled work ethic into all
sectors of Ghanaian institutional life. Below, I explore Anadan’s alternative aspi-
ration for the entrenchment of principled behaviors within these establishments.
In this first cartoon in the Anas Is Watching series (figure 4), a female student, in
a miniskirt and revealing sleeveless top-crop attire, pushes herself onto her “prof”

FIGURE 4. Anadan, “Sex-for-Academic-Grades” (Anas Is Watching series). Courtesy of the

artist.
142 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

to make him an offer—“do anything you want to do to me”—to “pass the exams.”
One key reason why this cartoon would be perceived to be so entertaining for many
Ghanaian audiences is the artist’s literal visualization of one of the meanings of a
popular Akan phrase “atɛ ‘gya!” (“it’s suddenly lighted!”). This phrase euphemisti-
cally references a visible but clothed male penile erection. In the cartoon, Anadan
renders this saying through four ticks around a halo that seems to “glorify” a bulge
in the professor’s pants!
Clear evidence that the student is negotiating for a good grade in exchange for
sex includes the protruded lips in close proximity to the teacher’s face, as well as
the seemingly unsolicited blanket sexual proposal for the lecturer to do whatever
he wants to her. The audacity of the student to be within the professor’s working
space and his fixated gaze on the woman’s chest (through the artist’s arrow in that
direction) also suggests the professor seems prepared to agree to the sexual terms
of “grade fixing.” However, both desist, trepidatiously, with the realization that their
potential misdeed might be exposed. Beyond this theme, one feature that makes
this cartoon uniquely Ghanaian is the artist’s appropriation of a popular joke of
pretentious formally literate people who instinctively speak their mother tongue
in times of dire need. An example of this is the professor uttering the Akan phrase
“eish, Awurade, ade yi paa” (“Oh dear Lord, as for this [offer]”). Another example is
when the woman uses pidgin English, a widely spoken Ghanaian lingua franca, to
express her wish of passing the examination: “then u make me pass the exams . . .
so you allow me to pass the exams.”
The genius of this cartoon’s focus is that it “solves” the issue of the rumored
prevalence of the practice of sex for academic grades at some public institutions
of higher learning. However, in real life, despite the strong perception of the
existence of the practice, my informal conversations with some faculty and staff at
the University of Ghana and University of Cape Coast suggest there has not been
much progress made to stem the issue. Some people with whom I interacted noted
the authorities have not instituted measures to gain students’ confidence to allow
them to report cases of sexual harassment in exchange for good grades. As a result,
there has been little concrete evidence to spark serious discussions leading to steps
to help stem this rumored practice. Thus, the cartoon, in the spirit of Anas’s various
investigative works on unethical practices in Ghana, seeks to spotlight the issue
of sex-for-grades, perhaps to force a general debate on the matter and encourage
transparency. Another dimension that the cartoon highlights, perhaps in an attempt
to provide a balanced perspective on the issue of sex-for-grades, is to contradict
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 143

the popular belief that it is male professors who usually harass female students for
sexual favors in exchange for good grades. A critical reading of this cartoon suggests
that Anadan, following Anas’s crusade against unethical practices, has provided
“visual proof” of a Ghanaian educational problem. In doing so, perhaps the goal is
to help initiate a national discussion leading to providing the necessary structures
to help stop or minimize the practice.

Police Recruitment Malpractices

Bribery is the highlight of the second cartoon of the series (figure 5). In this cartoon,
a visibly annoyed police commander hurls offered money at a potential police
recruit. The basis of the commander’s anger includes, first, the recruit, who seems
not to meet the required height specification to apply to the force; and second,
the failure of the bribe-giver to realize that the commander is apparently beyond
corruption. Two matters make this cartoon comical. The first is the artist’s reliance
on a local Ghanaian insult for short people through the analogy of a yam. The second
relies on an inversion of a popular expression that people use for the Ghana police:
“ketewa biara nsua” (“even the most meager [amount] is deeply appreciated”).
This derogative tag hints at the perceived indiscriminate acceptance of bribes
by members of this state institution. Thus, what makes the cartoon ironically
entertaining is the commander’s rejection of a seemingly substantial bribe that
contradicts popular expectation in such circumstances.
The overarching theme of bribery associated with (high-ranking) officers in
Ghana’s police force in connection with recruitment, as explored in the cartoon, is
an existential problem within the service. It was not until recently that the police
began to take bold steps to tackle the problem. For example, in March 2015 the Daily
Guide newspaper and other Ghanaian media reported the interdiction of thirteen
junior police officers as well as the director general of human resources of the Ghana
Police Service, Patrick Atimbilla, for involvement in a police recruitment scam. In an
institution that most Ghanaians perceive to be very corrupt,21 most people deemed
this (seemingly) bold step as merely cosmetic. The cartoon subtly highlights the
perception that the Ghana Police Service is not serious about fighting corruption,
especially within its own ranks. Here one senses that in spite of the commander’s
visible rejection of the bribe, his main motivation is not on being a morally disci-
plined public official but rather on his fear that “Anas is watching.” Thus, Anadan
FIGURE 5. Anadan, “Bribery” (Anas Is Watching series). Courtesy of the artist.

FIGURE 6.Nikowayo, Anas Is Watching: Do the Right Thing, highway mural, 2016. Photo by
the author.
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 145

implicitly makes a serious call to the Ghana police for an end to corruption within
the service based on strengthened internal guidelines that directly address the issue.
One can argue from this that the focal point of the Anas Is Watching series is to
implicitly suggest that we eschew unethical work behaviors not because we might
get caught but rather we should practice principled work ethics because it is the
appropriate thing to do. In all, it seems Anas’s bold endeavor of exposing financial
corruption in Ghana’s judiciary—which, as mentioned earlier, is the inspiration for
the set of cartoons examined here—is catching on within the Ghanaian popular
visual ecologies. We witness this in a 2016 mural by the artist Nikowayo entitled Anas
Is Watching: Do the Right Thing (figure 6) on the Kanda-Nima Highway in Accra.
Within the context of positioning the mural on a popular highway patronized not
only by common people but also by high-ranking civil servants and political elites,
Nikowayo seems to caution that, in our time, the exposure of malfeasance does not
rest with a mandated institution with a known face.

The Black Narrator’s Cartoons as “Resistance”

The Black Narrator is a distinguished and respected male cartoonist whose works are
both timely and incisive on the subject matter and visualization of such concerns.
His official public presence on the Ghanaian visual satirical scene began with
publishing works on Facebook. Arguably, it was his works on this social media site
that gave visibility to his skills and thus possibly convinced the Daily Graphic—one
of Ghana’s largest daily newspapers—to hire him as one of their cartoonists. In
spite of his popularity on social media, he closely protects his public identity but
is known by people in his artistic circle.
My key reason for choosing to investigate The Black Narrator’s works in this
chapter, as opposed to other cartoonists like Daavi, is his conscious effort to engage
critically with Ghanaian sociopolitical concerns through his Facebook page. Thus,
despite being employed by the Daily Graphic, the artist continues to create unique
cartoon content for his page. Here, I should note that The Black Narrator’s specific
cartoons on his Facebook page and those he produces for the Daily Graphic exhibit
no discernable inconsistencies in terms of their stylistic execution and rhetorical
incisiveness. In other words, another attribute that informed my choice was that
he was, arguably, the first to exemplify the changing nature of cartooning in Ghana
since 1992. For instance, unlike other cartoonists such as Akosua,22 Tilapia, and
146 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

FIGURE 7. Daavi, “Kweku Anyidaho Office.” Courtesy of the artist.

Makavelli, The Black Narrator’s works exhibit visual stylistic sophistication. As

well, The Black Narrator’s works differ from other Ghanaian cartoonists in terms
of certain communicative techniques. Thus, while The Black Narrator uses only
Standard English in his cartoons (perhaps to target non-Ghanaian audiences),
others, like Daavi (figure 7)—as well as Akosua, Tilapia, and Makavelli—employ a
combination of Ghanaian pidgin English and a variety of Ghanaian languages in
addition to Standard English.
I investigate The Black Narrator’s works from the perspective of “resistance.” My
sense of “resistance” is rooted in an understanding not limited to nongovernmental
organizations and civil society organizations, which Chabal notes are “ostensibly
constituted to balance the power of the state [but extend to] more grassroots”23
practices such as graffiti and tattoos that ordinary people use to contest political
elites. I take The Black Narrator’s cartoons as an ordinary “citizen action”24 to
challenge dominant sociopolitical narratives in Ghana. In my view, the creation
of these cartoons, for noncommercial purposes, is steeped in the artist’s “desire to
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 147

reject a particular social [or political regime that he views] as antithetical to the
achievement of certain objectives structuring [Ghanaian] society.”25

Corruption

A critical analysis of The Black Narrator’s cartoons from 2013 to 2015 (comprising
fifty-nine works) reveals recurring themes. One prominent topic is financial
corruption associated with certain political parties and such institutions as the
judiciary, police, and church. In the cartoon “The Fight against Corruption” (figure
8), the artist portrays certain professionals (for example, a policeman, a judge, a
clergyman, and an international businessman) who are firmly settled on what
seems to be a centuries-old “baobab corruption tree.” A feature about those seated
there is obviously their intimate and corrupt partnership with financial wealth.
We also observe a crowd determined to get rid of these professionals’ seemingly
permanent “residence.” In spite of the visible resolve of people to get rid of the
practice and those associated with it, we witness the interest of some of these
corrupt personalities in “negotiating” with the disgruntled crowd by “showering”
them with money.
The cartoon suggests several things. One is the embedded and endemic nature
of corruption in some core sectors of society. We witness the serious nature of
the spread of this cankerous practice in how those on the tree seem comfortable
in their belief that the masses cannot get rid of corrupt practices. The second is
that the very act of the masses to forcibly rid corruption through their own efforts
points to their conviction that the practice cannot be rooted out by “appealing to
the moral sense”26 of those elected leaders and public officials who are involved
in these very acts.
If “The Fight against Corruption” cartoon is a broad call for grassroots mobili-
zation to physically fight and end financial corruption in the public service, then
the cartoon “What a Shock!” (figure 9) categorically highlights the judiciary as an
unambiguously crooked institution where unorthodox tactics are needed to rid this
sector of corrupt judges. The cartoon showcases a man video-recording three visibly
shocked judges, firmly shackled by and engrossed in “corruption.” On the face of
it, the cartoon merely re-presents Anas’s undercover investigation that provided
solid visual proof of massive corruption in Ghana’s judiciary. However, the cartoon,
in terms of such aspects as a judge’s revealed buttocks, can be read as a symbolic
stripping of their social power and moral authority as arbiters of impartial justice.
FIGURE 8. The Black Narrator, “The Fight against Corruption.” Courtesy of the artist.
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 149

FIGURE 9. The Black Narrator, “What a Shock!” Courtesy of the artist.

Furthermore, in depicting the actual undercover methods that Anas used

(including facial disguise and secret audio-video recorder) to expose the depth
of corruption in the judiciary, the cartoon suggests that eradicating this menace
requires resolute, ordinary individuals in this endeavor. In both cartoons, one
discerns The Black Narrator’s conviction that ordinary citizens have the capacity
to eliminate and/or minimize corruption. This perspective sharply challenges
the mere rhetoric of some Ghanaian politicians that they possess the “political
will to fight corruption.”27 Here, the cartoonist’s visual project highlights ordinary
people’s concrete acts of fighting corruption. In light of Manasseh Azure’s recent
investigative revelations about what he calls “President Mahama’s [Ford Expedition
vehicle] ‘gift’ from a Burkinabe contractor,”28 one can read The Black Narrator’s
cartoons as a caustic critique challenging official narratives from the former
presidency about their “‘numerous’ measures to reduce corruption, . . . [urging]
cabinet ministers . . . to deal with civil servants guilty of embezzlement, [as well as]
considering bills that improve the right of information, support whistleblowers and
handle conflicts of interest.”29 In doing so, the cartoons, cumulatively, act as a form
150 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

FIGURE 10. The Black Narrator, “Some Changes Must Come from Ourselves.” Courtesy of
the artist.

of resistance, obviously not within the scope of “dramatic revolutions and grand
rebellions” (Willems), but as “one of the myriad ways ordinary people cope with
and undermine the politics of hegemony pursued by the political elite” (Chabal).30

Sanitation

Another key theme in The Black Narrator’s work is the negative sanitation culture
related to littering in Ghana. The artist holistically examines the topic in “Some
Changes Must Come from Ourselves.” The cartoon—which also spotlights and
critiques the culture of lateness and lack of objectivity in Ghanaian political
discourse—dissects the issue from two perspectives.
The first is the factual issue of inadequate (or non-existent) trash bins (espe-
cially in the Accra Metropolis). The second is the willful complicity of citizens who
use the excuse of lack of bins to litter. In this cartoon, the artist explicitly faults both
citizens and the specific metropolitan authority as responsible for the resultant
filth crises that are an everyday experience in some parts of Accra. Inasmuch as the
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 151

FIGURE 11. The Black Narrator, “Garbage Nightmare.” Courtesy of the artist.

artist makes clear that both citizens and the relevant authority are both culpable,
in 2014’s “Garbage Nightmare” (figure 10) the cartoonist seems to suggest that we
should largely blame Dr. Oko Vanderpuije, the chief executive of Accra Metropolitan
Authority (AMA), for the city’s crises.
In the cartoon, we witness a frightened man in the likeness of Dr. Vandepuije
being chased by an anthropomorphic garbage giant. At the time that the cartoon
appeared, Accra faced a garbage crisis. One key reason was inadequate dumpsites
stemming from improper planning. Combined with this was the reluctance of
contracted, private waste management companies to execute their duties because
the AMA owed them 2.2 million Ghana Cedis.31 Thus the portrayal of the chief
executive being chased by humongous humanlike garbage strongly suggests the
problem stems from his (in-)actions. In this cartoon as well, The Black Narrator’s
visualized critique of the garbage crises challenges and thus resists the implicit
suggestion from the AMA that the issue “just happened.” An analytical reading of
the cartoon posits that the “garbage nightmare” could have been nontraumatic if
the AMA chief had properly planned the disposal of garbage in Accra.
The last key theme I examine in The Black Narrator’s works is political
152 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

FIGURE 12. The Black Narrator, “Sir Oko Vandamme.” Courtesy of the artist.

ineptitude. From the cartoons on the theme, such incompetence results from
political (in)actions that appear to purposely threaten the existence of ordinary
Ghanaians. The artist explores this topic in the cartoon “Sir Oko Vandamme” (figure
12) within the intertwined context of the perennial Accra floods (and associated
deaths) that occur every year and Dr. Vandepuije.
The context of this cartoon references two incidents. The first is an Africa’s Best
Mayor Award that Dr. Vanderpuije received on 30 April 2015 in Angola. Not more
than two days after receiving this award, Accra had one of its worst flooding disas-
ters. The second context is the firm promise Dr. Vandepuije gave in June 2016 to the
effect that the city of Accra, unlike in previous years, would not experience any flood.
However, a few days after this audacious assurance to the nation, Accra experienced
heavy rains, which again caused serious flooding in places such as Odawna, Airport
Residential Area, and Adabraka. It is against this backdrop (imagined in the cartoon
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 153

as the massive flooding in the big man’s office) that the journalist seeks affirmation
from “Sir Vandamme” regarding his clearly failed political mandate as AMA chief.
The response—“Well, but I am Africa’s Best Mayor”—which obviously does not
acknowledge this failure, is a vicious critique of actions of the mayor. Specifically,
the critique is that his response has no bearing on solving some of Accra’s major
problems such as choked gutters and enforcing residential bylaws. One such action
of the mayor that has no bearing on the effective functioning of the city was erecting
billboards in Accra that showcased his reception of the Africa’s Best Mayor Award.
In this cartoon, The Black Narrator thus explores political ineptitude as rooted in
delusion and narcissism, which constrains political action.
Another dimension of this theme of political ineptitude manifests in the
cartoon “Interesting Priorities.” In this piece, we witness a seated football-clutching
gentleman, in the semblance of Ghana’s former president (John Mahama), an-
swering a question from a journalist. In responding to his justification to increase
a winning bonus (presumably to a soccer team) to $15,000, the gentleman, via a
confident smile, gives a peculiar response. The reply justifies his action on what
appears to be his clear discernment of soccer as the only thing his people need

FIGURE 13. The Black Narrator, “Interesting Priorities.” Courtesy of the artist.
154 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

“more than anything else.” To him, what further solidifies the bonus authorization
is how it aligns with implementing his priorities, which we can assume to be his
disinterest in paying the twenty-months-old salary arrears of the nurses.
The cartoon is a stinging assessment of the former president’s action (in October
2013) when he decided to boost the morale of the national team by increasing their
winning bonus by 50 percent if they won against Egypt. Mahama’s action came at
a time when Ghanaian nurses had gone on strike against the nonpayment of their
salaries for nearly two years. Specifically, The Black Narrator’s critique questions the
logic of the president’s “interesting priorities” precisely at a time when the nation
needed funds to settle nurses’ salary arrears. In a classic case of veiled bluntness,
The Black Narrator presents Mahamas’s act as purely misplaced and thus casts him
as an incompetent political leader. This alternative “resistive” critical perspective
of the cartoonist points to The Black Narrator’s involvement in key deliberations
in the country that affect the lives of citizens.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I explored Anadan and The Black Narrator’s cartoons through
the respective lenses of “critical entertainment” and “resistance” to signal how
entangled popular cultural entertainment genres are with meaningful critiques and
the realm of resistance. Thus, in Anadan’s pieces, for example, we become aware
that cartoons, as a popular cultural genre in an emerging democracy, are dynamic
in terms of their simultaneity to entertain and offer meaningful critiques. Clearly,
this grounded insight cogently counters the popular and one-sided perception of
this genre as merely humorous. One implication of cartoons’ ability to critique
humorously occasions us to question the rationale for such a move in an emerging
democracy like Ghana with a track record of guaranteeing citizens’ right to freedom
of speech. To this query, I argue that perhaps this tactic is a cautionary measure to
protect the artist against libel lawsuits and physical harm. Another reason might
be that since humor allows for indirect critique, it enables the cartoonist to bridge
the gap between silent disapproval of certain political actions and avoid financially
expensive and time-consuming legal remedies to those actions. Thus, the humorous
critique in this context addresses passive subjects who are aware of wrongdoing
but do not wish to verbalize their awareness, and, more important, do not wish to
act on their own awareness of wrongdoing.
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 155

In terms of my discussion of The Black Narrator’s works within the framework

of “resistance” in a democratic environment, the analysis shows that the cartoons
are examples of different expressions of resistance. A feature of this type of “cartoon
resistance” relates to how they act as significant markers through which to assess
a country’s practice of democratic ideals, including freedom of the press and a
“government[’s] tolerance of [citizens’ critical] free speech.”32 In this vein, The
Black Narrator’s caustic “alternative [cartoon] mediation”33 of corruption through
“The Fight against Corruption” and “What a Shock!” can be read as a testament to
Ghana’s current democratic credentials of encouraging and guaranteeing citizens’
divergent opinions. One benefit of this insight, for African political communication
researchers, is to begin to appreciate and position contemporary African political
cartoons not as exclusively risky and subversive communication. Rather, these works
should make us appreciate the genre’s dynamism, which, like any working sensing
device, enables us to detect and capture certain ground realities associated with a
country’s current political dispositions.

NOTES
My sincere gratitude for critical feedback to Moradewun Adejunmobi, Juan Rodriquez,
Madellin Wong, Akosua Darkwa, Florian Carl, Nana Akua Anyidoho, Nate Plageman, and
the anonymous reviewers.

1. Interview with Anadan, January 2015, at his former residence-office in Atomic Down,
Accra, Ghana.
2. Ebenezer Obadare, “State of Travesty: Jokes and the Logic of Sociocultural Improvisation
in Africa,” Critical African Studies 4 (2010): 95.
3. See also Tejumola Olaniyan, Arrest the Music: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Ebenezer Obadare, Humor, Silence and
Civil Society in Nigeria (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016), Kwesi Yankah,
“Nana Ampadu, the Sung-tale Metaphor, and Protest Discourse in Contemporary Ghana,”
in Language, Rhythm, and Sound: Black Popular Cultures into the 21st Century, ed. Joseph
Adjaye and Adrianne Andrews (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), 54–73.
4. Bettina von Lieres, “Citizenship from Below: The Politics of Citizen Action and Resistance
in South Africa and Angola,” in Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st
Century, ed. Ebenezer Obadare and Wendy Willems (Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey
2014), 61.
156 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

5. Wendy Willems and Ebenezer Obadare, “African Resistance in an Age of Fractured

Sovereignty,” in Obadare and Willems, Civic Agency in Africa, 7.
6. Kofi Anyidoho, “Oral Poetics and Traditions of Verbal Art in Africa” (Ph.D. diss., University
of Texas, Austin, 1983).
7. Yankah, “Nana Ampadu.”
8. Wendy Willems, “At the Crossroads of the Formal and Popular: Convergence Culture and
New Publics in Zimbabwe,” in Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa, ed.
Herman Wasserman (London: Routledge, 2011), 46.
9. Daniel Hammett, “Political Cartoons, Post Colonialism and Critical African Studies,”
Critical African Studies 2, no. 4 (2010): 12. See also Ebenezer Obadare, “The Uses of
Ridicule: Humor, Infrapolitics and Civil Society in Nigeria,” African Affairs 108, no. 431
(2009): 241–61.
10. Obadare, “State of Travesty”; Hammett, “Political Cartoons”; Daniel Hammett, “Narrating
the Contested Public Sphere: Zapiro, Zuma and Freedom of Expression,” in Obadare
and Willems, Civic Agency in Africa, 204–55; Andrew J. Mason, “The Cannibal Ogre and
the Rape of Justice: A Contrapuntal View,” Critical African Studies 4 (2010): 32–64; Klaus
Dodds, “Popular Geopolitics and Cartoons: Representing Power Relationships, Repetition
and Resistance,” Critical African Studies 4 (2010): 1–9; Wendy Willems, “Comic Strips and
‘The Crisis’: Postcolonial Laughter and Coping with Everyday Life in Zimbabwe,” Popular
Communication 9, no. 2 (2011): 126–45.
11. Von Lieres, “Citizenship from Below,” 61; Patrick Chabal, foreword to Obadare and
Willems, Civic Agency in Africa, 1–24; Wendy Willems, “Alternative Mediation, Power and
Civic Agency in Africa,” in The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media,
ed. Chris Atton (London: Routledge, 2015), 88–99; Wendy Willems, “Risky Dialogues: The
Performative State and the Nature of Power in a Postcolony,” Journal of African Cultural
Studies 27, no. 3 (2014): 356–69.
12. Teun A. van Dijk, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed.
Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi Hamilton (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001),
352.
13. Muriel Saville-Troike, The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2003).
14. Willems, “At the Crossroads”; Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds.,
Media Worlds: Anthropology on a New Terrain (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002); Eric W. Rothenbuhler and Mihai Coman, Media Anthropology (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 2005).
15. Interview with Tejumola Olaniyan by African Digital Art, 6 February 2015,
 Cartoons in Ghana’s Fourth Republic | 157

africandigitalart.com/2015/02/encyclopedia-african-political-cartooning.
16. For new scholarship, see Baba Jallow, “From Saint to Devil: The Visual Transformations
of Kwame Nkrumah in Accra Evening News Cartoons 1961–1966,” Stichproben: Wiener
Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien/Stichproben: The Vienna Journal of African Studies 27,
no. 13 (2014): 79–103; Baba Jallow, The Kwame Nkrumah Cartoons: A Visual History of the
Times (Accra: Woeli, 2014); Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, “‘Better Ghana Agenda’: On Akosua
Cartoons and Critical Public Debates in Contemporary Ghana,” in Popular Culture
in Africa: The Episteme of the Everyday, ed. Stephanie Newell and Onookome Okome
(London: Routledge, 2014), 131–53; David Kobla Fiankor, Noble Komla Dzeblor, and
Samuel Kwame, “Illustrating and Shaping Public Political Memories through Cartoons:
The 2013 Presidential Election in Ghana,” Journal of Pan-African Studies 10, no. 1 (2017):
240–62.
17. Achille Mbembe, “The ‘Thing’ and Its Doubles in Cameroonian Cartoons,” in Readings
in African Popular Culture, ed. Karin Barber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2001), 151–63; Francis Nyamnjoh, “Press Cartoons and Politics: The Case of Cameroon,” in
Cartooning in Africa, ed. J. Lent (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2009), 97–110; Lyombe Eko,
“It’s a Political Jungle Out There: How Four African Newspaper Cartoons Deterritorialized
African Political Leaders in the Post–Cold War Era,” International Communication Gazette
69, no. 3 (2007): 219–38; Lyombe Eko, “The Art of Criticism: How African Cartoons
Discursively Constructed African Media Realities in Post–Cold War Era,” Critical African
Studies 4 (2010): 65–92.
18. Willems, “Comic Strips and ‘The Crisis,’” 126; Mason, “Cannibal Ogre”; Dodds, “Popular
Geopolitics,” 113; Hammett, “Political Cartoons,” 12; Peter Vale, Keeping a Sharp Eye: A
Century of Cartoons on South Africa’s International Relations, 1910–2010 (Johannesburg:
Otterley, 2011).
19. Audrey Gadzekpo, “Street News: The Role of Posters in Democratic Participation in
Ghana,” in Wasserman, Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa, 105–22;
Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, “Occult Rituals and Cyberfraud in Ghanaian Video-Movies,”
African Studies Review 57, no. 2 (2014): 131–47; Oduro-Frimpong, “‘Better Ghana Agenda.’”
20. dele jegede, “Cartoons,” in African Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Philip M. Meek and
Kwesi Yankah (London: Routledge, 2004), 104.
21. Daniel Armah-Attoh, Edward Ampratwum, and Jeffrey Paller, Political Accountability
in Ghana: Evidence from Afrobarometer Round 5 Survey, Afrobarometer Briefing Paper
136, March 2014, afrobarometer.org/publications/bp136-political-accountability-ghana-
evidence-afrobarometer-round-5-survey.
22. On the cartoons of Akosua, see Oduro-Frimpong, “Better Ghana Agenda.”
158 | Joseph Oduro-Frimpong

23. Chabal, foreword, xiv.

24. Von Lieres, “Citizenship from Below,” 50.
25. Jendele Hungbo, “‘Beasts of No Nation’: Resistance and Activism in Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s
Music,” in Obadare and Willems, Civic Agency in Africa, 170.
26. Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 2001), 139.
27. “Mahama Bribery on BBC,” YouTube, 18 June 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrqDl_
gwdX0.
28. Manasseh Azure Awuni, “President Mahama’s ‘Gift’ from Burkinabe Contractor,” 15 June
2016, www.manassehazure.com/2016/06/full-story-president-mahamas-gift-burkinabe-
contractor/.
29. “Ghana’s Mahama to Fight ‘Institutionalized’ Graft,” www.acauthorities.org/news/ghanas-
mahama-fight-%E2%80%98institutionalized%E2%80%99-graft-new-bills.
30. Wendy Willems, “Beyond Dramatic Revolutions and Grand Rebellions: Everyday Forms of
Resistance in the Zimbabwe Crisis,” Communicare 29 (2010): 1–17; Chabal, foreword, xv.
31. N. L Bentil and N. A. Agyeman, “Garbage Swallows Accra: AMA Pays GH¢600,000 to
Contractors,” Graphic Online, 22 May 2014, www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/
garbage-swallows-accra-ama-pays-gh-600–000-to-contractors.html.
32. Hammett, “Political Cartoons,” 2.
33. Willems, “Alternative Mediation.”