*News recently broke out that the singer and actor who smashed racial barriers in the US, Harry Belafonte, had died. This was a day before I traveled to South Africa, and whilst there I went through my OUR ROOTS archives to update the Harry Belafonte feature strip I had done many years ago in black and white, the essence of documenting history properly, especially with important dates including the year of death and updating to colour.
So, there I was, updating once drawn OUR ROOTS on Belafonte in Johannesburg South Africa. Belafonte’s name came up a couple of times when South Africa’s top cartoonist Zapiro and myself were in conversation with Cartoonist Tyler Pike in Muizenberg at a cartoon talk presentation arranged for us. I had flown to Cape Town and was Zapiro’s guest at his beachside residence. A very good host together with another South African cartoonist, Brandan Reynolds. He would excite everyone in attendance in Muizenberg, which included telling the story of when Belafonte was in South Africa and wanted to meet him due to his hard-hitting and popular political cartoons and the cartoonist himself. US General Colin Powell was to fly to South Africa for a racism conference in 2004 but President George Bush Jr. did not allow him to go. George Bush’s act upset Zapiro and he did a cartoon about Bush not allowing Powell to attend the conference.
Belafonte attended the racism conference and did see the cartoon Zapiro drew and also another cartoon that used his “Banana boat song” with a twist. So, whilst in South Africa for the conference, his agent arranged for him to meet Zapiro as he wanted to meet the cartoonist behind the cartoons. When they met, he said to Zapiro…” I was expecting a black man.”
Years back, when we all drew cartoons, many found it difficult to put faces to cartoons. These days with the internet, it is much easier to do so. In my own case, I got those in attendance singing the banana boat song with an awesome response. It goes to show the popularity of Harry Belafonte. My singing actually prompted Zapiro’s awesome story. He is a very good storyteller. Belafonte was one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s confidants. He will be sadly missed and not forgotten for his music, which will live on, and for his Civil rights involvement as an activist.
TAYO Fatunla whose work has been featured on MSN.com via EURweb.com is an award-winning British-Nigerian Comic Artist, Editorial Cartoonist, Writer, and Illustrator and is an artist of the African diaspora. He is a graduate of the prestigious Kubert School, in New Jersey, US., and recipient of the 2018 ECBACC Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award for his illustrated OUR ROOTS creation and series – Famous people in Black History – He participated at UNESCO’s Cartooning In Africa forum held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and the Cartooning Global Forum in Paris, France and has held a virtual OUR ROOTS cartoon workshop for SMITHSONIAN- National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C. His Fela Kuti image is prominently featured in Burna Boy’s mega-Afrobeat hit song “Ye”. – https://www.instagram.com/tfatunla123
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