King Kinya: The fearless man behind those rib-tickling editorial cartoons

Dar es Salaam. Before I joined The Citizen newsroom 19 years ago, I thought my painting career was at the pick, and I have seen it all. It was until I was proved wrong by then The Citizen’s editorial cartoonist Sammy Mwakinga showed me what it means when we say ‘quality work’.

This is how Kinyanguli John, famously known as King Kinya The Citizen’s cartoonist started to narrate his career journey as he traveled together with The Citizen for 19 years now.

His career journey started when he was 8 years old. It all started with doing sand drawing, making guitars using trees, and making handmade mwiko for making ugali.

However, his talent was never appreciated by her father in the beginning, who wanted him to focus more on studies, despite the fact he was also a good performer at school. He is happy that now he is using his talent to do the journalism work through cartoon drawing.

“As The Citizen celebrates its 20 years in the market, I want to thank the management for exposing me to so many opportunities as I grow. If not for The Citizen and my former teacher Sammy to trust my ability and accept to nurture me, I wouldn’t have been on the list of big cartoonists in the country today,” said Mr Kinya.

He said that soon after entering The Citizen’s newsroom, he noticed the good work done by Sammy. To him, the carton seemed ready for publication; it was just the first draft in terms of quality and idea presentation or message in the cartoon.

In the beginning, it was very hard for Sammy to convince the bosses that there are Tanzanian cartoonists who can do good work. The majority of the decision-makers by then were Kenyans. It took Sammy a while to build trust with the bosses that Kinya can also do it if given an opportunity.

“Finally, they accepted me after submitting some of my work. It took a while for me to understand that the kind of work I am doing cannot be compared to what Sammy does, as every artist has their own style. In the beginning, I had to kind of copy Sammy’s style but slowly went back to my style but coped well along in terms of submitting quality work,” said Kinya.

In connection to The Citizen’s being the house of quality work, he remembers the very first Features Editor, Loy Nabeta, who came from Uganda. He taught him the hard way, as she never accepted the cartoons, which never went along the lines of the idea presented in the story. “Reworking on the cartoons made me mad in the beginning, but in the process I came to realize I was growing and making a brand for myself for being pushed to go the extra mile and come up with quality work,” he said.

Over the years he has done a lot of cartoons, some of which created tension in the country as the policymakers or other people thought the cartoons were about portraying them as failures to some key issues affecting the country’s development.

Commenting on this, he said he remembers how he resigned his work after a certain newspaper was forced to apologize for the cartoon he drew showing dogs with sharp teeth who cannot bite.

“I woke up and switched on the TV. To my surprise, I found the conversation was about my cartoon, and they were very angry. I just went to the bedroom and looked for my passport hahahaha joking. In my mind, I was happy that the message was sent and delivered, but I was thinking about what was next. My former boss immediately called to calm me down,” he said.

The following day, the paper wrote a full-page article apologizing. To him, that sounded like disrespecting his work, and he resigned. The following day, some big media houses picked up the story and were on his side, insisting there was nothing wrong with the cartoon.

That has never been enough. The cold war is still there now because of so many papers he is working on. Most editors have the fear of the unknown, and for him, he is used to returning his cartoons to be reworked so that the papers won’t have issues with the government.

“Being criticized by what I do is not only for the current affairs cartoons I do. In the beginning of my career, I was also chased at my uncle’s house for drawing his cartoon in one of the papers,” said Mr Kinya.

This taught him it is okay not to be liked by what you do. The most important thing is sending out the message, and the impact will somehow somewhere help the majority.

He said that for cartoonists, that kills creativity, as they think a lot for more than five hours to come up with something interesting. But being tasked to do simple cartoons is like being silenced for freedom of speech for cartoonists.

He said, The Citizen has a very positive way of nurturing talents. It exposes people to different opportunities since it is respected. The majority of people who have worked at The Citizen are always the best performers, even when they get other jobs.

For him, he will always cherish the growth and opportunities presented to him by The Citizen. However, he calls for more freedom of speech to be given to writers and cartoonists without the feat of unkown.