Political cartoons and other forms of political satire are widely regarded as key indicators of the health of a democracy. Cartoonists and satirists are important social and political actors whose work can hold elites to account and challenge excesses of state power. Critical and popular scholars of geopolitics view expressions of state power and of resistance to state power in political cartoons and popular culture as a vital and active component of discursive networks through which meaning and understanding are constructed. Individual cartoons and films can be used to ‘read’ or ‘decode’ a particular moment or event, acting as a window on a nation's Zeitgeist. Analysis of the narratives contained within a series of cartoons, comics or films can provide a more nuanced, diachronic account of the shifting geopolitical landscape. These foci, however, remain preoccupied with elites – not the political elites of concern in formal and practical geopolitics, but media elites – and overlook the importance of audience reception and responses to these geopolitical messengers.

This chapter therefore considers audience responses to several controversial cartoons by Zapiro, South Africa's leading post-apartheid cartoonist, in order to develop further insights into the contested process of democracy in South Africa. Such an engagement provides a basis from which to identify and analyse the complex mosaic of resistance, recognising that subjective decoding of cartoons and satire elicits a range of reactions and interpretations that do not generate a single mode of resistance.