The repugnant capitalist: bodies and body language in D.C. Boonzaier’s Hoggenheimer caricature

Editorial cartoons are powerful tools to influence the political opinions of newspaper readers. Between 1915 and 1940 D.C. Boonzaier, the foremost South African cartoonist of the early twentieth century, produced editorial cartoons for Die Burger, a Cape Town based Afrikaans daily newspaper. It was the mouthpiece of the National Party, which promoted Afrikaner interests and opposed English domination, British imperialism and capitalism. Boonzaier created Hoggenheimer as an anti-capitalist caricature to mobilise Afrikaner support for the National Party. In this article a semiotic analysis of selected cartoons is performed to show how Boonzaier used his portrayal of Hoggenheimer to instil in nationalist Afrikaners feelings of aversion towards capitalists and their collaborators, including Louis Botha and Jan Smuts as leaders of the South African Party and later Barry Hertzog and Smuts as leaders of the United Party. Using the different elements of Hoggenheimer’s body, including his facial features, body shape and size, clothing, accessories, posture and body language, Boonzaier constructed his image of the ugly Jewish capitalist who represented everything (materialism, greed, arrogance, etc) that was averse to Afrikaner moral values. Boonzaier’s long-term use of the Hoggenheimer caricature as an unequivocal visual symbol of repugnance inscribed anti-Semitic, anti-capitalist and anti-Smuts perceptions in the psyche of Afrikaner nationalists, which contributed to Afrikaner nationalist mobilisation.