ABSTRACT
In the last two decades there has been substantial scholarship generated on the contributory role of the African media in facilitating (and in some cases undermining) democracy within the context of a growing culture of media pluralism and freedom on the continent (Karikari 1994; Bourgault 1995; Chalk 1999; Hyden 2003; Nyamjoh 2005; Gadzekpo 2008). Much of this scholarly enquiry has been limited to traditional mass media (print, radio, television) and, increasingly, new media platforms (the Internet, social media, blogging, mobile telephony, etc.). And while research in the area of popular culture has produced a corpus of material on music, oral and popular literature that illuminates the diverse ways in which Africans assert their speech rights (Barber 1997; Fabian 1997; Mbembe 1997; Newell 2001; Ogude and Nyairo 2007), not enough attention has been paid to visual media forms such as posters. Two publications from South Africa – Images of Defiance: South African Resistance Posters of the 1980s by the South African History Archive (1991) and African Posters: A Catalogue of the Poster Collection in Basler Afrika by Miescher and Henrichsen (2004) – demonstrate that despite the dearth of research on the subject, a rich harvest of posters has been produced on the continent. The range of posters contained in both books reflects the diverse roles posters play in African society – from political education and mobilization during undemocratic rule, to galvanizing people during elections and raising awareness on health and education issues. The salience of posters in Africa is illustrated also in Fourie’s (2008) study on political campaign posters in South African elections. Fourie (2008) argues that beyond image building such posters set the agenda for political party campaigns and in so doing contribute to the formation of democratic value. Compared to Western countries, posters have had a short trajectory in Africa. The earliest poster in the collection of about 900 posters contained in the Miescher and Henrichsen catalogue is a Namibian election poster from the 1930s. According to Deirdre Donnelly (2005) the peak of poster production in Africa was in the 1970s and 1980s when solidarity movements were encouraged to produce posters to educate and mobilize people in response to apartheid-era violence.
