NANDA Sooben, the internationally acclaimed cartoonist and head of the Centre for Fine Art Animation and Design was at a loss on Sunday morning when he awoke to the news that his Morningside design school had been broken into and expensive computer equipment stolen.
Sooben told Berea Mail the theft took about three minutes. “It was during the security shift change. Footage showed there were five of them. One outside keeping a lookout while three with masks kicked the back door down and ran in. It looked very organised. They broke through the back gate and drove their fancy BMW into the parking lot. The one ripped the desktop off the reception desk, while the others went to my office and the animation room,” he said.
The veteran has been busy compiling a book and all his work in progress was on his state of the art Apple Mac. “I had left my back up flash disk in the Mac,” he said with deep regret. Sooben’s book was nearing completion. He had sifted through more than two decades and thousands of cartoons which he had scanned and captioned for his book aptly titled, Screwed! It’s not Funny- 20 years of our Democracy.
“I wasn’t sure about the title of my book but now it is so apt. We thought we finally had freedom in this country but we get screwed by crime and other occurrences. I was planning to release the book in April in line with 20 years of democracy but decided there was too much happening now so would wait till December.”
Sooben said he felt very violated by the robbery. “You don’t realise that feeling until it happens to you. It is like a slap in the face. How could someone do this to me.
“I can redo my work and go back to my cartoons and put the book together, but the students’ animations were on the computers that have specialist animation and design programmes and they could lose very important work if it is not recovered.
“I appeal to anyone with any information or if people hear of cheap Apple Macs on the market to get in touch with Berea SAPS Det MM Mabaso on 031 3122345. There are passwords on these specialised computers for design and they cannot be used by the man on the street,” he added.
