Comedy thrives as country falls apart
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s economy is falling apart, and police are cracking down on growing antigovernment protests. But the country’s comedy scene is booming. No subject seems taboo.
Even 92-year-old President Robert Mugabe, widely accused of muzzling free speech, is a target.
Insulting the president can bring a one-year jail term in the southern African country. Nonetheless, the comedians carry on, becoming bolder as fears of speaking out begin to erode.
In one skit at a show on Thursday called “State of the Nation,” an actor playing the first lady, 51-year-old Grace Mugabe, lays her stake to the presidency on hearing the news of the “death” of her husband, the world's oldest head of state.
“I deserve it. Were any of you cleaning his nappy and wiping the spit off his chin?” she says. She also talks up her own chances of winning elections.
“We have always won, even when I was pushing the old man in a wheelbarrow,” she says, a reference to the real first lady’s comment at a political rally last year: “I will push President Mugabe in the wheelbarrow to bring him to work.”
Near the end, a fake Mugabe emerges, struggling to walk while scoffing at rumors of his demise. Some in the audience laugh. Others gasp. The real president has joked at the persistent rumors, telling reporters earlier this month: “It is true that I was dead. And I resurrected. As I always do.”
The comedy show played to a packed audience in the capital, Harare.
“Comedy allows us to laugh but also to think about our problems at the same time,” said Sam Monro, or Comrade Fatso, a stand-up comedian.
In everyday life, the state of this once-prosperous country’s economy and politics is hardly a laughing matter. Government has failed to pay its close to 300,000 workers, including the military, on time since June.
Industries are closing down, worsening unemployment where more than two-thirds of the population of 13 million survive on informal work, according to the African Development Bank. People line up for hours at banks to access their money as currency woes deepen.
The speculation over the health of Mugabe, this country's only leader since independence from white minority rule in 1980, has only heightened the uncertainty.