Portrayal of the COVID-19 pandemic in political cartoons in Tanzania

Abstract

Previous analyses of Tanzanian political cartoons unearthed corruption practices, impingement of democratic processes, stereotype representation of gender relations, and power relations between politicians. The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic opened another avenue to investigate the contents of political cartoons in Tanzania, as had already been reported in Jordan, Nigeria and South Africa. This paper looks into the messages contained in caricatures of Nathan Mpangala and Ali Masound (Kipanya) through the lens of the theory of multimodality, Three pertinent verdicts emerge: (i) the foregrounded messages concern cautions about the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, preventive measures on the onset of coronavirus, control measures after the penetration of the pandemic in Tanzania, and the role of the interim President of Tanzania; (ii) as the traditional of caricatures, satirical and metaphorical styles had been employed by cartoonists to derive the intended messages; (iii) the predominance of Kiswahili (over English) appears to suggest the choice of the language of public communication to be reverted to Kiswahili-only, rather than the presence regulations, which permit both Kiswahili and English.