Laughing Along Racial Lines: Humour in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s transition to a democratic state in 1994, with its liberalised free-speech policies and race-based reforms, had an immediate and transformative effect on comedy. There was a massive increase in the establishment of comedy clubs and festivals, the production of comic media-like sitcoms and films, and more recently, the expansion of new forms of online and digital humour (via YouTube channels and podcasts), as well as the racial diversification of comic talent. Amid this comic revolution, this article identifies the specific, distinctive character of post-apartheid comedy in South Africa, exploring the ways in which the content, style and delivery of humour produced by Black comics differ from those constructed by White comics. It contends that, while the former increasingly engage with issues of race, culture and politics with unprecedented candour, such taboo-breaking moratorium is antithetical to (most) contemporary White comics, whose performances—across various platforms—are marked by jocund humour and political (albeit not always socio-cultural) disavowal. Furthermore, it explores the extent to which these race-based comic trends are influenced by, respond to and negotiate both the vestiges of the past and current racial-social-political discourses. Albeit in a vastly distinct way, this article concludes that the humour produced by these comics—irreverent and subversive versus conservative and facetious—nevertheless allows them (and by extension society) to negotiate the vestiges of the past and the disquiets of the present in order to serve the overarching drive of promoting social cohesion and healing.