Drawing Reality
How does one speak truth to power? Some use a microphone. Godfrey “Gado” Mwampembwa, a popular political cartoonist in east and southern Africa, prefers pen and paper.
Speaking to the audience about what’s happening in Africa and the Global North, Gado uses his work to literally illustrate the ironies, injustices, hypocrisies, and the harsh realities of the ways in which African countries are treated by the West.
Throughout the presentation, in which he went through 26 slides of his work, Gado emphasized the duplicitous nature of economic policies “rich countries” and international financial institutions like the IMF World Bank.
From the trend of Africa’s presidents for life (Moi in Kenya and Mugabe in Zimbabwe) and the rise of China as the new lender to Africa (“China knows what it wants from Africa, but do we know what we want from China”) to the privilege of race (African leaders abusing power in the same ways Africa’s colonial leaders once abused power when they went into the continent) and the issue of corruption, Gado’s illustrations exemplified the importance of the work Jubilee USA and its partners are committed to completing.
Download Gado’s Powerpoint presentation to look at the slides he presented at Stories Behind the Frontlines. Feel free to email Gado and tell him what you think or ask him questions.
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