Anti-mainstream publication aims to provoke and engage, writes THERESA SMITH
When Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes published the first Bitterkomix in 1989, the local publishing scene included a few underground independent English comics, but none in Afrikaans.
“Then it ( Bitterkomix) turned out to be the first one that was really attacking the Afrikaner. Very anti-apartheid, very anti-society, anti everything. It was very anarchic,” Kannemeyer said.
His father, a literary critic and professor of Afrikaans and Dutch, exposed a young Kannemeyer to all sorts of lefty Afrikaner writing, and his biggest inspiration at the time was the Afrikaans magazine Stet, a printing term that means “let it stand”.
Bitterkomix 17, the latest Kannemeyer/Botes collaboration which launches today, is dedicated to Tienie du Plessis, the Stet editor who published their first Bitterkomix.
“That was an anti-conscription comic,” says Kannemeyer.
At the time he watched his fellow students being harassed for putting their names on an End Conscription Campaign list and decided not to follow suit. “I thought, I’m going to live a life of hell, let me rather make comics and be left alone and I can undermine from a different angle.”
He still considers Du Plessis one of the biggest anarchists he’s ever met and a personal hero, hence the Bitterkomix 17 dedication. Some of the work uses Du Plessis as a character, which Kannemeyer has done before, while others discuss his legacy.
Number 17 also includes new work from artist Jo Daly, with his contribution being what will be the first chapter of his next comic.
Cape Town based independent publishing house Xlibris Books and Isotrope Comics are publishing Bitterkomix 17, having replaced Jakana Media.
“Jakana were fantastic. They allowed us to do whatever we wanted but I think in the end they did run into problems. They would send books to bookshops and then the bookshops would send it back, saying 'we cannot have this filth on our shelves’."
During a panel discussion at Fancom earlier this month, Kannemeyer was asked who he writes for and if he feels a responsibility towards that audience. In response, he agreed with a panellist who said: “Write as if your parents are dead”.
“If people don’t want to read Bitterkomix, they don’t have to."
“It is not a mainstream publication, so that frees me up to do what I want. Obviously people have their opinions. Some say it’s great, others say it is perverted, but that’s okay. They have the right to their opinion.
“You can’t just work from a point of making beautiful things. You have to have a reason why you are making art. It comes back to that artist’s personal taste, and what you are left with is why do I make this art, and that is when it becomes significant.”
Kannemeyer laughs when he describes his younger, idealistic self who thought the message of every comic book was the most important ever. “I wanted to show the world how things should be and how critical I am of the past. That faded…”
As his reputation grew and he started lecturing at Stellenbosch University, more people would ask his advice, and he remembers a group of Wits students asking him: “What next? What does the future hold for us? What do you think?”
“I thought: 'I am not the guy with the answers. I am the one who holds the mirror up to society and shows things that I find weird or problematic. That is my role, the satirist’.”
The idea of responsibility towards an audience has never sat well with Kannemeyer. That is until he had children and, while specifically reading Tintin in the Congo to them, he had to rethink how he presented the material in order for them to understand that images can be used to denigrate.
Trying to figure out how to teach them to critically engage with words and images to understand concepts like racism and prejudice has taught him a measure of personal responsibility that no amount of public opprobrium ever has.
Over the years, Bitterkomix has been published in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal in various languages, and by issue 14 to 15 had shifted to half English, half Afrikaans. But Bitterkomix 17 is a return to Afrikaans, with only one English contribution from Daly.
It isn’t just because of the dedication to original anarchist Du Plessis that the comic book has returned to its linguistic roots.
“The way we use Afrikaans in Bitterkomix has always been a street language, not high falutin.
“When I did Afrikaans academic essays I always thought it sounds so artificial, it’s bizarre. Maybe I have an inherent resistance to it because of my father. Because I’ve always been rebelling against him,” Kannemeyer muses.