HARARE, ZIMBABWE – Legendary comedian Edgar Langeveldt, 42, performed at the final comedy night at the Book Café, a cultural landmark in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, before it closed on the last day of 2011.
It was a poignant performance as Langeveldt, considered the father of comedy in Zimbabwe, says he performed both his and the café’s first stand-up comedy show here in 1997. The audience laughed into their beers in the smoky and jovial atmosphere at the café’s final comedy show, called “The Last Laugh.”
The café, a hub of culture for the past 30 years, was forced to close because of plans to build a new shopping center on the land. But in Zimbabwe, comedy is far from dead. The craft has witnessed a rebirth in recent years.
“Comedy is popular,” Langeveldt says. “Who doesn’t want to laugh?”
It was the last performance of the inaugural year of Simuka Comedy, a platform for up-and-coming and established comedians. “Simuka” means “stand up” in Shona, the language of Zimbabwe’s largest ethnic group. The group performed at the Book Café on the last three Wednesdays of December 2011.
Crediting Langeveldt as their mentor, the comics formed Simuka Comedy last year to continue to re-establish comedy in Zimbabwe. They attribute their courage to stand up and make Zimbabweans laugh to Langeveldt. Simba The Comic King, one member of the group who also performed at the show, says they hope to follow in Langeveldt’s famous footsteps.
Langeveldt says he brought stand-up comedy to Zimbabwe in 1997 through his performance at the Book Café. Leaving no issue unturned, he pursued this art even through the volatile years of 1999 to 2001, when expressing one’s opinion became dangerous in the country.
For confronting cultural and political conventions through humor and satire, he won in 2005 a Prince Claus Award, which honors people and organizations who positively transform their societies through cultural activities. The Prince Claus Fund also named the Book Café a laureate last year for serving as a platform for free cultural expression during decades of political and economic upheavals, repressive laws, strict censorship and weak cultural infrastructure in Zimbabwe.
Comedians say they have been able to resurrect the art of comedy in recent years by avoiding the topic of politics. They say there are a host of other issues to address and that comedy offers an informative and enjoyable medium to do so. Fans welcome the return of comedy to the country to tackle major topics through humor and urge comedians to infuse the revival of this art with innovation. Comedians say the future of comedy looks bright if they can overcome challenges of finding literal and figurative space to perform.
Comedy began to decline in Zimbabwe in 2000 and was dead by 2005 because of a zero-tolerance policy for government criticism. But local comedians have been reviving it since 2010 by staying away from political topics, with 2011 serving as a major period of growth.
“This year alone, 1,900,000 people have been exposed to stand-up in the country, and about 10 new young comedians have sprung out from almost nowhere,” Simba The Comic King says of 2011. “There was a fear by most to venture into stand-up because most thought that it was an art form of a political nature. But as you have seen, there are many other things one can address besides politics.”
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