I still don’t understand why SA or our African continent don’t have a late-night comedy show despite its growth, where issues are discussed or dissected in a comedic way, its a mystery to me. Truth to be told, this situation drives me mad and it makes me angry at the same time. I don’t want to put the blame to anyone but myself and fellow comedians we should take the responsibility because we’re the ones w play in this space, the sooner we realise that the better.
One can ask, what’s lacking to make this a reality and the answer is nothing, we have all the tools and capabilities to make this happen but for some no reason there’s no willingness to get this done and shame to all of us.
I know some comics a doing what they can to change the situation, people like comic legend Kagiso Lediga with ‘The Bantu Hour and The Late Nite News’ however KG and his team they need support they can’t do the job alone, we all need to push and pull the wagon of comedy and make it happen. I would love to see ‘The Bantu Hour’ as a late-night show, four days a week.
We can’t continue making excuses because we have all the tools, resources, and platforms to distribute content such as TV – we have several local tv stations and they need content and we can provide such content, we have cable television such as DSTV, Comedy Central Africa and digital platforms such as Showmax, Netflix and YouTune but no one is raising a hand or taking an initiative to make it happen and that’s worrying if you ask me.
Comedians are just waiting for someone to safe their lives and that not right, we need to make sh!t happen now not tomorrow to move our culture of comedy forward. No messiah’s coming to save us, we need to save ourselves from ourselves if you know what I mean. No disrespect to anyone but we need to get rid of the chip off our shoulder and do the right thing and grow our industry.
There’s a great opportunity out there waiting for us to grab straight up and run with it and some people have done it before outside our culture. Think of visionary entrepreneur such as Richard Branson, in 1985 Richard bought a second-hand airline named it Virgin Atlantic, 35years later the brother has a fleet of airlines flying around the world making a lot of money and creating opportunities for other people. We can do the same with comedy if we stop procrastinating and start doing the right things to move the comedy space to another level.
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