(AFP) – At a raucous comedy night in Johannesburg, no comedian could avoid cracking a joke about the chartered flight that, exactly a week earlier, took about 50 white South Africans to the United States for “refugee” resettlement. Spotting a middle-aged white couple seated in the diverse audience, 31-year-old comedian Tsitsi Chiumya pulled a theatrically shocked face. “White people! There are still some left! We need to make them extra comfortable,” he exclaimed, the crowd erupting into laughter.
Trump has used allegations of the “persecution” of white Afrikaners to attack South Africa, but the claims have largely been ridiculed at home, where the legacies of white-minority rule are all too apparent 30 years after the end of apartheid. Bilateral ties have plummeted this year over a range of policies, and President Cyril Ramaphosa is due to meet US leader Donald Trump in Washington on Wednesday in a bid to repair the damage.
– ‘Laugh through the pain’ –
The couples, families, and groups of friends gathered at the sold-out weekly comedy night came from all backgrounds and races. Co-host Shanray van Wyk was Afrikaans-speaking but from the “Coloured” community, a tag created by the former apartheid regime to designate a varied group of mixed-race people. “I also tried to apply, because I’m Afrikaans,” he told the crowd. “But they were very specific,” he said, pointing to his skin.
The audience cheered as comic Dillan Oliphant quipped, “When you’re privileged, equality feels like oppression.” “There’s no ‘white genocide’ here,” he said, picking up on a baseless claim repeated by Trump in his attacks on South Africa. “We can’t kill the white people … They live too far away!” he joked, a reference to the largely race-based spatial divisions that still mark South African cities, another legacy of apartheid’s racial segregation.
The challenges of living in South Africa — from high crime to wide inequality between rich and poor — mean that many of its citizens are “particularly predisposed to dark humour” as a “trauma response,” said comedian Dan Corder. “It’s a natural response … to laugh through the pain and the absurdity of rampant corruption, power outages, roads being ruined, things not working,” said Corder, who hosts a late-night television show that has also debunked Trump’s claims.
Humour has been “a really nice way to disarm people and to respond” to Trump’s “ludicrous” claims, said social media comedian and actor Anton Taylor. Taylor, who has a mix of Afrikaner and English ancestry, has released multiple skits mocking the “white genocide” conspiracy. In one, seen more than 100,000 times on TikTok, he cheers in pride that his country has produced “the best-fed, wealthiest refugees the world has ever seen.”
– ‘Farcical’ –
“When you see the lifestyle that the majority of white South Africans live, it is the furthest thing from a persecuted people that one could imagine,” Taylor told AFP. White people make up 7.3 percent of the population but still own most of the country’s farmland. Unemployment among white South Africans is just under seven percent but affects 36 percent of the black majority, according to official statistics. “The thought that we are being persecuted is farcical, so I will keep making jokes reinforcing the idea that this is a joke and should be treated as such,” Taylor said.
While there was some trepidation that Ramaphosa’s meeting with Trump could unravel into a televised confrontation, the high-stakes visit was still “a real point of pride,” Corder said. “Almost like witnessing a strong, quiet parent waiting for a petulant child to finish their tantrum,” he laughed. “I think it’s going to be very funny.”
– Julie BOURDIN
© 2024 AFP
