Zimbabwe’s comedians draw tears of laughter in troubled times

Victor Mpofu aka Doc Vikela performs during his stand-up comedy at the Bang Bang Club in Harare, on February 26 2015. (Pic: AFP)

With Zimbabwe’s economy on its knees and life a daily struggle for most people, there is one luxury that many can surprisingly still afford — laughter.

“We laugh at ourselves. We laugh at funerals. We laugh even when things are not going well for us and we should be moaning and groaning,” says award-winning dramatist and poet Chirikure Chirikure.

Out of difficult times, with unemployment rampant and poverty widespread, a new generation of comedians has emerged to give the stressed nation’s funny-bone a much-needed tickle.

Simuka Comedy – made up of Victor Mpofu, better known by his stage name Doc Vikela or simply The Doctor, Michael Kudakwashe, Samm Monro and Comic King – attract full houses to their regular shows at The Book Café, a popular arts joint in the capital Harare.

The young comics spare no sacred cows as they poke fun at anyone from veteran President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace to corrupt traffic police officers, former white commercial farmers and local celebrities.

Donning a doctor’s white coat and stethoscope, Mpofu dishes out what he calls “doses” of humour to audiences sick of hard times after 15 years of economic decline blamed on the policies of Mugabe’s government.

The “Doctor” has his audience in tears of laughter as he imitates the 91-year-old president announcing the list of countries he has just visited on one of his frequent trips abroad – while the government can’t find the money to pay civil servants’ salaries.

He also takes a dig at Mugabe’s 35 years in office.

“Zimbabweans, for all our literacy – with a 99.9995 percent literacy rate – we are the only country that will fail to answer a simple question: who is your former president?”

For many, Mugabe, who has been in power since independence in 1980, is the only leader they have known.

Explaining the growing popularity of their shows, Mpofu said relentless hard times made people look for comic relief.

“Humour is a medically proven stress reliever,” he told AFP.

“Things are tight and people need something to take the stress off their lives. People would rather spend their little cash laughing and drinking.”

Comedy fan and regular showgoer Enright Tsambo agreed, while noting that the drinking part of a night out was seriously limited by a lack of cash.

“We can’t afford to drink as much as possible so some of us just buy one beer and spend an evening laughing at a comedy show,” he said. “It takes the stress away.”

In a country where insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to a year in prison, the comedians have found a way of tackling serious issues without making direct statements, so they get away with jokes that could get ordinary citizens arrested.

Fun and trouble

Away from the comedy venues, Zimbabweans share jokes across social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp and through street theatre shows – and some of them have landed in trouble.

“We have had several cases where people have been prosecuted for freely expressing themselves and in most cases they will just be sharing or cracking a joke,” said Kumbirai Mafunda, spokesman for Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.

He cited the examples of a woman facing charges of insulting Mugabe after she sent a picture on WhatsApp purportedly showing the president in the nude, and a man who was arrested for joking that Mugabe was so old he would have a hard-time blowing up his birthday balloons during national celebrations earlier this year.

Mpofu’s colleague Samm Monro, better known by his stage name Comrade Fatso, pokes fun at the internal feuding which has seen factions in Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party waging bitter fights among themselves in the race to succeed him.

“Zanu-PF is the biggest opposition to Zanu-PF and now what is (opposition leader) Morgan Tsvangirai supposed to do?” Monro queried in one of his sold-out acts at the recent Harare International Arts Festival.

The University of Zimbabwe also came in for ribbing as the record holder for the fastest conferment of a doctorate – after Mugabe’s wife Grace was awarded a PhD three months after registering.

Monro is also among newscasters on the satirical Zambezi News, which parodies the state broadcaster Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, renowned for its pro-government spin.

Zambezi News bulletins, shown online on YouTube and on stage, feature characters such as the Minister of Impending Projects and the Minister of Mines, who owns a mine called Mine Mine – “because it’s mine”.

In the news bulletins white farmers whose properties were expropriated during the country’s controversial land reforms – partly blamed for the country’s economic collapse – are called “formers or farmers because most of them are former farmers”.

One of the country’s top production houses has produced a play, All Systems Out of Order, portraying the collapse of amenities such as public toilets as a symbol of the state of the country.

“There is so much pain, and people find solace in looking at themselves and laughing at themselves,” said theatre producer and actor Obrien Mudyiwenyama.

10 years ago

The AU owes young people inspiration

Hundreds of people adorned with traditional regalia from different cultures march through the streets of Durban on May 23, ahead of the annual commemoration of the 1963 founding of the Organisation of African Unity, presently recognised as the African Union. (Pic: AFP)

The African Union owes the citizens of African states an opportunity to gain true inspiration from their organisation. We have not been given that opportunity. The average educated African citizen sees the Union as a toothless dog barking at its problems, and if they surmount, merely burying them in Africa’s backyard, which I imagine is an abandoned desert filled with broken dreams. If this appears to be a dramatic analogy to you then allow yourself the chance to imagine what the uneducated citizen considers the African Union to be. Nothing. And no dramatised imagery can take that truth away.

Numerous articles have been written on the ineffectiveness of this organisation. Disaster after disaster has visited the member states of the African Union, while those involved in it appeared to do nothing more than shake their heads at the graveyard of missed opportunities. And who has suffered the most? The African people.

The purpose of the AU is to promote peace and security in Africa, but recent al-Shabab attacks in Kenya are thought by some to be a result of the mistakes made in the AU’s mission in Somalia which had an initial mandate of six months – yet close to eight years later, the operation remains active. The AU has also been accused of “regionalising local conflict”.

The purpose of the AU is to promote improvement in healthcare access for African citizens, but the Ebola crisis showed an organisation that seemed to insist on always remaining many steps behind local and international efforts to combat the epidemic.

The purpose of the AU is to promote Pan-African development. Since its founding in 2001, and despite the rise in trade-agreements between member states, intra-Africa trade has remained below 12%, an embarrassing figure when compared to Western Europe whose intra-continental trade clocks in at 80%. It is clear to even the most optimistic observer that African states just don’t take these agreements seriously.

More of these failings can be seen as you go down the list of objectives the AU set up for itself upon its birth. And every failure comes with its own excuse: low resources, pressure from the West, etc. But despite some of them being valid, the rest I chalk down to a blatant refusal to take this organisation where it should go as well as an obvious lack of faith in the vision that birthed the AU: the vision of a united and self-sufficient Africa.

How else can you explain the clumsy handling of regional conflicts? How else can you explain the slow response to healthcare disasters? How else can you explain the sheer lack of implementation of agreements between member states? How else can you explain how Africa can continue to produce almost entirely things it does not consume and consume things it doesn’t produce?

It is a complete lack of commitment to self-sufficiency, it is a complete lack of commitment to the vision of a united Africa.

To reject a vision is to reject the future. And what is more a sign of a rejected future than the African Union having a centenarian president as a representative of the youngest continent in the world? To reject youth is to reject the future.

And so far, I have seen very little being done to engage young people in the AU’s mission.

But something can be done. Schools all over the continent can energise young people by creating AU clubs. How they will go about it can be determined by the resources and abilities of their respective faculties. If the AU has shown us anything, it’s that this can’t be done with a top-down approach. It has to be a “grassroots” movement implemented by teachers and communities that do believe in the dream of a United Africa.

And nobody can tell me such a thing is beyond the abilities of the often poorly-funded schools that form the majority of education systems in Africa. If there can be debate clubs and science competitions, however under-resourced, there can be a model AU after-school club.

I am aware that a model AU conference takes place in South Africa from time to time, but such an occasion seems limited to the privileged few who can afford the tedious process of getting visas (another barrier to intra-Africa trade, unaddressed by AU) and funding.

But I am talking about the average African student, who naturally craves, as all young people do all over the world, to make a real difference: to matter. The poor children in rural schools who feel forgotten by the world are just the people we need to engage in the vision of a compassionate and prosperous AU.

If I sound like a dreamer it is because that’s just what the AU needs, young people like me filled with optimism and dreams, and how else shall the two meet if not by gaining familiarity in this fashion?

All over the world, the model UN conference operates and ignites passions in the souls of young people who are eager to feel involved. A continent-wide model AU program might be just what is needed to put into the minds of my peers that leading Africa is our rightful place and no amount of bureaucracy, corruption and poor resources will stop us from claiming it.

On Africa Day, the day we are supposed to celebrate Africa’s achievements since 1963, when 30 newly-independent and ambitious African states got together and birthed a vision of a prosperous continent, we have to realise that the AU owes us inspiration. But we will be damned if we wait for them to hand it to us. We must seize it for ourselves and push ourselves to victory.

Siyanda Mohutsiwa is a 21-year-old mathematics major at the University of Botswana. She is currently slumming it in Finland. Follow her on Twitter: @SiyandaWrites

10 years ago

6 African novels to fuel your wanderlust

(Pic: Flickr / Susana Fernandez)

We’ve picked out six African novels about travel guaranteed to delight any wide-eyed traveler like yourself looking for adventure. No matter how classic or unconventional your taste in fiction might be, you’ll find something on the list to comfort your travel-weary soul or tease out your inner adventurer.

1. Traveller To The East by Thomas Mofolo
Thomas Mofolo’s turn of the century classic is a petite, purse-size novella, but it chronicles the larger-than-life experience of a man called Fekisi, who abandons family and land and heads east to a mythical land where he hopes to encounter God.

Mofolo’s first novel is a travel story made alluring and exotic with the intensity of poetry and myth.

2. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
Who wouldn’t want to get enveloped in a fog of magical delight?

Tutuola’s second novel is what Alice in Wonderland could have been if Lewis Carroll had enough grit and gumption to imagine a world haunted by outrageous beasts and ghouls.

The novel charts the adventures of a little boy lost in an enchanted forest. His search for the way back home seem to take him deeper and deeper into secret colonies of creatures living in a plane of reality at odds with human life.

3. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Reading a novel this good can be good or bad – good because it blows your socks off, bad because it’s a once-in-a-life-time experience.

There is literally nothing out there like Beukes’ time-traveling serial-killer romp of a novel.

Harper is a creepy slime of a man who travels through time to kill women. Kirby is his only failed attempt. She survives his assault and commits her life to finding Harper and putting a stop to his murderous hatred for women.

For the lover of crime thrillers, this quirky time travel novel is a gift straight from the god of fiction.

4. Nigerians in Space by Deji Olukotun
Wale is a Nigerian lunar geologist. He is under the spell of a life-long dream to traveling out to the moon when the mysterious Mr. Bello offers him the chance to man a Nigerian space-exploration mission. But like most dreams, what starts out as the magical fulfillment of desire quickly slips into the realm of nightmare. Wale is caught within the complicated web of an African political illuminati. His attempt to piece the puzzle of his ever crumbling reality takes him on a nomadic jaunt through Houston, Stockholm, Basel, Paris, Abuja, Bulawayo, Lagos, Capetown, Johannesburg and Paris.

An exquisite blend of unpredictable twists and lightening-speed plot.

5. Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo
Ama Ata Aidoo’s quirky novel is a tourist adventure set in Germany and London. It charts the journey of Sissie, a bright and self-assured Ghanaian student who wins a European travel scholarship. Like any good explorer, she is very aware of her surroundings—an awareness that she conveys in a blend of poetic and prose expressions. In novels like this, travel through space easily becomes a journey into the self.

6. The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami
Step aside Marco Polo! Estebanico, a Moroccan survivor of a doomed Spanish expedition, is our latest guide through the alluring enigma of unknown lands and peoples.

It is 1527 when a ship with a 600-man crew and a calvary of 600 horses leave Spain and heads out to the gulf coast of the United States. Ravaged by a series of misfortunes, their great number is decimated, but Estabanico lives to tell the story of their subsequent travels across America and how their dream of becoming wealthy conquistadors becomes a humbling journey in search of self-discovery and redemption.
Give yourself a priceless gift. Get Laila Lalami’s new novel.

Brittle Paper is an African literary blog featuring book reviews, news, interviews, original work and in-depth coverage of the African literary scene. It is curated by Ainehi Edoro and was recently named a ‘go-to book blog’ by Publisher’s Weekly.

10 years ago

‘We are here’: Basotho march for LGBTI rights

There is a growing bustle of colour, sound and movement outside Maseru’s Setsoto Stadium this morning of May 16. A crowd is gathering, the majority of them dressed in brightly coloured clothing. Banners, flags and rainbow-striped umbrellas are being handed out. Shouts, whistles and laughter intermingle with the loud music blasting from the back of a truck.

Billy Molapo has dressed up for the occasion. He stands tall and proud in a long dress, stilettos, pink beret and large hoop earrings. His face breaks into a wide smile when I ask him how he feels about today.

“I’m happy,” he says simply. “I want to show everyone that I’m proud of who I am.”

In a little while, Molapo and the rest of the crowd will set off on a gay pride march through the streets of Maseru, held today to commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT). For the third year in a row, the event has been organised by Matrix Support Group, a local organisation working to promote the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in Lesotho.

Hundreds of people took to the streets in supports of LGBTI rights. (Pic: Meri Hyöky)

Since its establishment in 2008, Matrix has spearheaded the country’s emerging LGBTI rights movement. Lesotho’s laws regarding homosexuality are somewhat ambiguous. Female same-sex sexual activity has never been criminalised, but male same-sex sodomy is prohibited as a common-law offence. The anti-sodomy law, however, has never been enforced in an instance of consensual sexual activity. As is the case with many former British colonies and protectorates, the law has simply remained unchanged for decades. Lesotho’s Constitution makes no mention of offering protection to individuals against discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Moleboheng Mokotjo has been a member of Matrix for the past six years. This is her third pride march. She looks relaxed and comfortable, and shrugs off my question about whether she thinks there will be any trouble today.

“I think 2 out of 10 people will say something negative. For me, this march is a way of saying: ‘We are here. We are your brothers and sisters. Acknowledge us. Talk to us and try to understand what we are going through.’”

“My family knows that I’m a lesbian, but it’s something that we’ve never openly discussed. A lot of LGBTI people in Lesotho struggle to gain acceptance from their families. I have a friend who came out and has since been completely cut off from her family.”

“A lot of society still doesn’t accept us. You have to choose where you go, keep to your bubble, and know who to associate with. I know my space, I know where I will be accepted for who I am, and I don’t go into other spaces.”

Leshoboro Mokhameleli, an openly gay man and a volunteer with Matrix, says that there are occasionally incidents of violence towards LGBTI individuals.

“I know two friends who have been beaten up just for being gay, but this is something that rarely happens. Violence against gay people here is not as common as it is in South Africa. Name-calling happens all the time. People often shout out: ‘What are you? A man or a woman?’ I’m so used to it that I just brush it off and walk away.”

At least two hundred of us have gathered at this stage. The procession begins, led by a police van and the music-blaring truck. The people at the front break into a jog, lifting their rainbow-striped umbrellas and banners in time to the music. A giant, billowing rainbow flag is carried by about twenty people. The march goes through the very heart of the city. We walk past street vendors, pedestrians, taxis, hair saloons, butcheries, shisa nyamas and bars. It is impossible to ignore us. We are met by a whole range of facial expressions and reactions. Some onlookers simply stand and watch. Some look disapproving, some look indifferent. Many smile, laugh and begin to dance on the spot, responding in a natural, carefree way to the music.

People sang and danced during the procession. (Pic: Meri Hyöky)

We walk past the taxi rank, and when we get to our first set of traffic lights the whole group stops in the middle of the road and dances on the spot. People raise their knees high, and the giant rainbow flag is furiously waved up and down. The truck is now playing a well-known gospel song. Many of the marchers sing along, lifting their hands and ululating as they walk.

We arrive on Kingsway, the city’s main street, crowded with taxis, cars and people. Traffic is again brought to a standstill as we flood the road. At this point, Angel Thoko, a Matrix Program Manager, is standing at the top of the truck, shouting into the microphone. There is a sharp change in the tone of the march as her voice screams through the speakers: ‘Amandla!’ ‘Rights!’ ‘Down, homophobia, down!’ The aim of the procession is firmly declared, loudly and boldly for all to hear.

Later, I ask Thoko how she felt in that moment, standing on the truck and confidently shouting out in the middle of the city.

“I felt wonderful,” she laughs. “I felt freedom within myself, I felt as if I owned the space.”

“This march helps LGBTI people in Lesotho to get together, to unite. But not everyone is able to join us. There are still many people who don’t want to be seen, who worry about what their parents or their friends will say. We want this march to get bigger every year. There will never be a time when we say: we have done enough.”

Health care, government support

Sheriff Mothopeng, also a Matrix Program Manager, explains that a major focus of the organisation is campaigning for equal access to health services.

“Lesotho has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in Africa, and men who have sex with men (MSM) are especially at risk. We have projects where we sensitise health care workers at private and public health institutions, so that LGBTI people can easily access health services, without questions or discrimination.”

“In the future, we want to encourage parents and older people to come out and support this march. At the moment, it is mostly young people who are marching, so I’m afraid that some onlookers think to themselves that we are just ‘crazy children’, not to be taken seriously.”

Tampose Mothopeng, director of Matrix, laughs as he tells me about the slight hitch that the organisation experienced with the police on the eve of the march.

“I received a call from the police, asking me if this march was promoting homosexuality. If that had been the case, they would not have offered us any protection. I explained that this is an international commemoration against homophobia and transphobia, and luckily, in the end, they agreed to help, as they have done in the past two years.”

“We need more support from our government. We need leaders who recognise the diverse needs of their followers. We need government bodies to say to us: ‘We understand that you need health services, we understand that your rights must be protected. We are standing up with you to provide that.’”

“Matrix is working country-wide, in communities and in villages. We want to change the laws of this country, but first we need to make sure that people understand what we are talking about, so that when we come up, we come up with our parents and our supporters. We want the people, the gatekeepers, the leaders, to push this movement up.”

Leila Hall is a freelance writer living and working in Lesotho.

10 years ago

Porn or pop? Ugandan singer on trial for saucy music video

Jemimah Kansiime is being charged in a Ugandan court of law for wilfully and unlawfully producing, trafficking, importing, selling and abetting pornography, the first person to be indicted under the new anti-pornography law. (Pic: AFP)

Bouncing and grinding, singer Jemimah Kansiime’s music video was a hit among her Ugandan fans, but not for conservative politicians who say it broke a tough new anti-pornography law.

The 21-year-old singer, who uses the stage name “Panadol wa Basajja” – literally, “medicine for men” – has already spent five weeks in jail after her arrest for a music video that gives a lingering and generous focus on wet and soapy buttocks.

Now she faces up to 10 years in jail, if found guilty in the first full trial under the law – which took effect in February 2014 – that critics such as Human Rights Watch argue so loosely defines pornography it has encouraged public attacks on women wearing skimpy clothing.

Critics say it is part of a growing anti-liberal movement including tough laws against homosexuals in Uganda, where religious-driven conservatism appears to be on the rise and where US evangelical preachers rather than pop stars like Kansiime often receive rock star welcomes.

“I was aware that there are some sections of society that are conservative,” said the singer, smoothing her rainbow coloured hair extensions that always cover one eye.

But one thing she thought she had learnt from her idols – including Rihanna and Nicki Minaj – is that sex sells.

“I was just experimenting to see if I put on a short dress, will the audience like it?” said the singer.

She made the video that has placed her in hot water last year for her song Nkulinze – or “I am waiting for you” – about “a young lover’s intimate fantasies”.

It has proved popular, and the video has been watched over 140 000 times on YouTube. But Kansiime said she never dreamt that writhing in her underwear was breaking the law. She and her then manager Didi Muchwa Mugisha were arrested in November.

Mugisha pleaded guilty and was fined 200 000 Ugandan shillings (75 dollars), but Kansiime pleaded not guilty, and was held for five weeks before raising the cash bail.

“When I was making that video I never intended it for children, I intended it for adults. I did not sell or distribute the song,” said Kansiime, wearing a short, leopard print dress with tiny straps, revealing a push up bra underneath.

“My rights have been trampled upon, my freedom of expression has been trampled upon,” she told AFP in her simple tin-shack home in the capital Kampala.

Shocked minister

Her lawyer, Isaac Semakadde, argues the case is a test for the right of Ugandan performers to “express themselves”.

“That right to erotic entertainment, there has to be a space for it in an open and free society,” he told AFP, saying divisions must be made between clearly criminal offences such as child pornography.

“To ban all forms of pornography, all forms of nudity, is outrageous,” he said.

She was tracked down and arrested after Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo was shocked at the video. Lokodo has recently boasted that he and his “intelligence team” of spies are “on the ground” watching such singers closely.

“That’s why Panadol was arrested,” he said, describing her videos as “very obscene and vulgar”, and warning of more arrests.

The former priest said singers such as Rihanna were “the type of people I’m condemning.”

“She’s a very provocative dancer… there’s nothing at all good there,” he said.

In his continued crackdown on pornography, Lokodo has this year ordered police to arrest men who procure prostitutes and described a popular local television dating show as prostitution. Local media reported that he also confronted Uganda’s youngest MP when she walked into parliament in a short skirt.

Semakadde accuses the ethic ministry of ignoring more pressing issues.

“The decadence in society does not start and stop with prostitution,” he said. “There’s corruption – but they have no answers to that, so they go for the most vulnerable.”

Kansiime is due next in court later this month. But Semakadde said he will request the case is halted while the Constitutional Court deals with a separate petition brought by activists against the law, arguing it is “overbroad and vague”.

Amnesty International has called for the law to be repealed and Semakadde ultimately wants it scrapped, too.

Inspired by her struggle, Kansiime’s next song tackles unemployment.

As she awaits her next court appearance, she insisted that she had the right to film “whatever I want”, but conceded she may need to cater for more conservative tastes if she is to make a living from her music.

“I have to do something that people like, I have not benefitted from that video,” she admitted.