The sharp end of satire

The cartoonist behind This is Wild talks freedom, backlash and the strange joy of finding humour in political chaos

- Kibo Ngowi

Carlos Amato's career as a cartoonist began, as he puts it, with a "lucky pitch". After a decade in the newsroom as an editor and writer, Amato was burnt out and doodling his way through meetings when an unexpected opportunity came along.

A vacancy opened at the Mail & Guardian after the legendary Zapiro moved on.

"I happened to draw a decent cartoon for my pitch," he recalls with a laugh and, just like that, his next adventure began.

Eight years later, Amato has built a name for himself as one of South Africa's sharpest visual satirists, his cartoons being published in the Mail & Guardian, News24 and now in his first book collection, This is Wild.

The collection spans a chaotic period in South African life — state capture, load-shedding, populism, pandemics — with Amato's wry, painterly eye cutting through it all.

His work is both critical and compassionate, capable of skewering power while still finding humour in the absurdity of everyday politics.

I caught up with Amato to talk about his evolution from journalist to cartoonist, the delicate art of satire and what he calls "the reigning brands of madness" at the moment.

It helps a lot. Cartooning requires a kind of writing. You have to condense complex issues into a single moment. It’s journalism, just in a different grammar.

The fewer words, the better, which took me a while to grasp. When I manage to do a cartoon with no words at all, I feel good about it, but it's tricky. You can lose clarity.

You also learn that symbols don't mean the same thing to everyone. I'll reference a song from the Eighties or a movie from the Nineties and realise most of my audience doesn’t get it.

So, it’s a constant balancing act, finding that sweet spot where the idea lands for as many people as possible.