Party logos show cynicism is not only justified but necessary
Welcome to the second instalment of this election cycle’s Useless Political Party Logo Bashing Bash (UPPLBB). It seems you have to have an acronym to get anywhere in the political landscape, so I figured I’d come up with something catchy of my own. I must admit, I didn’t give my brand identity much thought. But then again, neither did many of the “designers ”— I use the term hesitantly — whose work is blighting street poles, smartphone screens and ballot papers across SA this month.
In last week’s instalment, I halfheartedly apologised for the cynicism with which I appeared to be approaching the founders’ intentions or the organisational aptitude of some new political parties running for election. But then came the farce of the Jabulani Khumalo and Jacob Zuma uMkhonto weSizwe leadership sideshow, followed by the absurd theatre of a Constitutional Court application by three parties — the African Congress for Transformation (ACT), the Labour Party of SA and the Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats (AASD) — to postpone the elections because they didn’t get their candidate lists in on time.
Now I can heartily retract my halfhearted apology. Cynicism is not only justified but necessary. Our expectations are so low that we barely complain when parties exist primarily to use our political system as a kind of cash machine. Just ask the aptly acronymed African
Transformation Movement (ATM). But I wrote about that party’s misleading logo back in 2019, so the less said about it now the better.
Other parties are there as a forum to vent anger. Are you exploding with righteous fury at the corruption or ineptitude of the established parties? Start your own! And show that you’re really, really cross. Like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk. I assume that is why the newly formed but venerably named Labour Party of SA has an enormous green-tinted fist splashed across its website and social media channels.
The Labour Party’s actual logo is a rather bland L and P inside a mineshaft gear, an allusion to the logo of its parent organisation, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. The union has a significant base to draw on, and one should not underestimate Joseph Mathunjwa.
But the iconic raised fist of the oppressed masses is at risk of falling into bathos when it looks like something from a employs a raised fist — making Marvel movie. the shape of Africa, and in the
The green fist is clenched ANC colours, nogal. A again in the logo of the Labour communist red star and Party’s co-litigants, the AASD. hammer and sickle are thrown This time there are two of them, in for good measure. But I can’t holding the ends of a thick green help seeing, in the arched black chain. I would have thought at thumb that extends down to the least one of the links should be southern tip of the continent, a broken — a sign that the party is snake that is reared and ready to promising to liberate the strike. It wouldn’t be the first downtrodden. But perhaps time that Magashule is depicted (there is that cynical voice in serpentine terms. again) it’s ultimately in the The prize for worst logo interests of those in the must surely go to the Economic political party system for the Liberators Forum (ELF), whose shackles to remain. attempt to commit identity theft
Such a conclusion is unfair to on the EFF succeeded against all the AASD, whose logo, after all, odds and who will now be just suggests self-sacrifice rather below the EFF on the ballot. The than self-enrichment: if I am ELF logo looks an awful lot like correct, at its centre is a the EFF’s raised fist overlaid on multicoloured pelican, the an image of Africa, just without ancient Christian symbol of the spear and mineshaft. charity and redemption. But it If you look closely, however, could also be what a hadeda it’s a tarred road heading to a looks like when you’re tripping. bizarre Babel of smokestacks.
There is arguably a hidden The message is clear: vote for biblical image in the logo of Ace the ELF and put SA on a Magashule’s ACT. It, too, highway to hell.
AT ITS CENTRE IS A MULTICOLOURED PELICAN, THE ANCIENT CHRISTIAN SYMBOL OF CHARITY AND REDEMPTION