Making Fun Of Ink And Angels
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday April 8, 1994
CAPE TOWN, Friday: South Africa's turbulent and deadly election campaign has provided little in the way of light relief.
But cartoonists finally had their opportunity this week when a policeman described a visit from an angel and a black leader told of porridge tainted with anti-voting ink.
The bizarre tale of the poisoned porridge came from General Bantu Holomisa, outspoken military leader of the Transkei homeland and a prominent African National Congress parliamentary candidate, who claimed President F. W. de Klerk's ruling National Party was feeding blacks invisible ink in their porridge to prevent them voting in the country's first all-race election.
Those eating the porridge with their fingers, General Holomisa told an Eastern Cape rally this week, would have their hands marked with the ink used to ensure residents cannot vote more than once.
The ink, used in elections in neighbouring Namibia and Zimbabwe, is only visible under an infra-red light. General Holomisa then led his supporters in a chant of "Down with the porridge of the Boers".
While the National Party laughed off General Holomisa's suggestion, the Cape Town Afrikaans daily, Die Burger, promptly produced a cartoon of a black toddler refusing to eat the porridge mentioned by "General Bantubonkers".
The angel, meanwhile, appeared to a senior Nelspruit policeman in a pillar of light to ask the country to pray for peace. Lieutenant-Colonel Johan Botha initially was so afraid of ridicule he kept his vision to himself for several days, but his subsequent revelation prompted "hundreds or perhaps thousands"to promise him they would pray in their homes.
Neither story is exactly side-splitting in a society that takes its religion seriously and in which police hit squads did use poison as part of their dirty tricks arsenal against anti-apartheid activists. But in a country where at least 15,000 people have died in political violence in the past four years, it made better reading than the daily body count.
© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald