What Happens When Cartoonists Get Serious
By Katie Fogleman, December 14, 2015
It’s hard to imagine that we live in a world where adults would take over a children’s school playground, then spray kids with tear gas when they get upset about it.
But that’s exactly what happened in Kenya in January, when the government allowed a land developer to sneakily erect a wall around the playground of a primary school while the kids were on holiday. When teachers and students staged a protest, police officers unleashed tear gas on the crowd.
And that was just one of the latest in a series of land grabs that have been happening in Kenya for decades, in which people in power (the government, corporations, investors, etc.) simply take chunks of land without any documentation. This land almost always belongs to poor people, who are then left without homes and livelihoods.
Luckily, a group of artists in Kenya are getting serious about using their medium of choice—cartoons—to publicize and end this injustice.
The East African Cartoonist Society (KATUNI), with support from our partners at the Land Development and Governance Institute (LDGI), are using their cartoons to implement a social media campaign to educate Kenyans on land grabs and inspire them to talk openly about land issues.
With elections coming up in 2017, and with two important land bills currently up for debate, their timing couldn’t be better.
We recently helped LDGI design and launch a home for the campaign at http://landcartoons.co.ke. Check it out, and join the conversation on social media by following #LandToons.
