Reading cartoons’ interpretation of the verdict and sentence in the Pistorius murder trial: The case of Zulu and English newspapers

This article is an interpretation of cartoons’ interpretation of both the verdict and the sentence in the Oscar Pistorious trial for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Selected for analysis, in terms of methodology and sampling, are those cartoons that appeared in isiZulu and English newspapers in South Africa, during September and October 2014. Specifically interpreted in these cartoons is their production of social meaning(s). This work is concerned mainly with cartoons’ content and their ideology, and less so with aesthetics and form. If cartoonists, by nature, read a particular subject and then reproduce social meaning from it through references to other familiar happenings in the public sphere, this work examines the allusions/metaphors used by cartoonists in this regard. Cartoons, in this work, are regarded as texts that represent cartoonists’ conscious decoding of both the verdict and the sentence, and subsequent representation of them for public reception. In reading the ‘reading’ of the verdict and the sentence, the article concludes that cartoons made little references to race, gun control, urban violence, violence against women, wealth and celebrity status, which had already engulfed public discourse about the Pistorius trial. Cartoons did find Judge Masipa ‘guilty’ of a lenient verdict and sentence.