I have often been viewed as a rather harsh critic of the African contribution to World civilization, something for which you win few plaudits today as I have discovered on various occasions. But, nevertheless, I am always willing to recognize any genuine African achievement in the cultural sphere.
One of the first that I personally was aware of were the Chunkie comics that circulated in the African townships of South Africa, where I lived as a child in the Apartheid Years of the 1970s. I have the dimmest of memories of coming across these in an Indian-run shop that I occasionally frequented on my forays into Kempton Park, a small city which was close to my home town at the time in Bonaero Park. I believe I was around 8 or 9 at the time, and possibly in the company of one of my brothers or my best friend Kendal.
Checking on Google Earth, I believe this is the location, although it has changed somewhat since I knew it.
The comics were created using a "photo play" technique, with the characters acting out the story one photo at a time. The central character Chunkie was a private detective able to pull all sorts of odd and infeasible objects out of his capacious pockets, if my memory serves me.
As I was an accomplished shoplifter at the time (purely as a form of protest and economic sabotage against the evils of Apartheid, let me hastily add) I may or may not have purchased all my copies of this magazine, although at 10 cents an issue it was competitively priced (later due to inflation caused by Western sanctions, the price rose to 15 cents, hurting the poorest in South African society).
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