Searching for Pap'Azo

Centre Africain de la Caricature (CAC) is wondering if anyone would know the whereabouts of the cartoonist Pap'Azo?

Azo Bikoka, or Papa Azo (Pap'Azo) belonged to the first generation of Congolesan cartoonists, who in the 1950s addressed a situation of combat against colonialism and the demand for independence. The colonial papers before them had been unpolitical, but with the growing awareness and soon insistence on new times, new papers emerged. Combat papers, Alain Mushabah Massumbuko, CEO and researcher of CAC, calls them. 

And with the combat papers, came combat cartoonists.

Pap'Azo, No comment, 1965.
Centre Africain de la Caricature.

The tone of the publications was a light one, constantly tickling the colonial power, interspersed with verbal abuse of the more direct kind. All in all the newspapers are said to have played their part in Congo gaining independence i 1960 and one of the most important of these young artists was Pap'Azo. From combat cartoonist he went on to draw the social daily life of the new country and the struggle to find a new footing, among others witnessing the assasination of the first elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, in 1961. 

Pap'Azo, Will the People declare him guilty???
No comment.
- Life! How it changes! you strive to get as high as possible
and one fine day you discover that you have never been this low!
The first president, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, who
was dismissed and for a time placed under house-arrest in 1965.

Today, there are no known works of Pap'Azo in existence. The one shown here, is the only print known today, published presumably in 1965 or 1966 in a local newspaper in Kinshasa. But original works could be out there, as could Pap'Azo himself. He was last known to be living in the Kisangani area, more precisely in the parish of Saint Kizito.

If anyone knows of him or his works, please contact the Centre Africain de la Caricature at 
TEL: (+ 243) 89 54 71 159 / 99 99 81 390.