Dr Do-Little and the African Potato by Zapiro

Dr Do-Little and the African Potato (Collectible Zapiro Political Cartoon Collection)

Zapiro's Sharp-Edged Cartoons on South Africa's AIDS Policy and the ARV Rollout, Drawn from Three Leading Newspapers

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: Dr Do-Little and the African Potato: Cartoons from Sowetan, Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times
• Author: Zapiro
• Publisher: Double Storey Books, a division of Juta & Co. Ltd, Cape Town
• Publication Date: 2003
• ISBN-13: 9781919930374
• ISBN-10: 191993037X
• Binding: Publisher's illustrated yellow card wrappers, perfect bound, landscape format.
• Physical Format: Landscape softcover, roughly medium softcover size, 160 pages. Black and white cartoons throughout, with a colour cover.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
• Exterior / Wraps: Bright yellow illustrated card wrappers, clean and fresh in appearance. There is a tiny white speck or mark at the top right corner of the front cover. The yellow spine, lettered in blue, shows a faint crease or small nick near the lower end and slight wear at the foot. Corners and edges are generally intact.
• Interior: The text block appears tight and the pages clean and white, with no markings, highlighting or annotations. The title page shows a slight shadow of show-through from the copyright page and a small dark mark at the top left of the page.
• The Dust Jacket: Not Applicable (As Issued)

Synopsis & Historical Value

Dr Do-Little and the African Potato, published in Cape Town in 2003 by Double Storey Books, gathers cartoons by Zapiro first seen in the Sowetan, Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times. The collection takes its name from the Dr Do-Little character, a pointed lampoon that runs through the book.

The cartoons deal with the AIDS policy debates of the period and the rollout of antiretroviral treatment, and they preserve the satirical voice that made Zapiro one of the best-known commentators on South African public life. The back cover carries press praise and a list of the cartoonist's other collections.

As a record of how a national health controversy was drawn, argued and remembered in newspaper cartoons, the book is of interest to collectors of South African political satire, students of the post-apartheid era and anyone who follows Zapiro's work.

Author Profile: Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro)

Zapiro is the pen name of Jonathan Shapiro, born in Cape Town in 1958. He studied architecture at the University of Cape Town and became editorial cartoonist of the publication South in 1987. He was detained by the security police in 1988, shortly before leaving on a Fulbright Scholarship.

He served as editorial cartoonist for the Sowetan from 1994 to 2005 and has also worked for the Mail & Guardian and the Sunday Times. He received the Media Institute of Southern Africa's Press Freedom Award in 2009. His other books include Bushwhacked (2002) and Long Walk to Free Time (2004), and he has published a long run of annual cartoon collections.