The first time Schalk Bezuidenhout and Loyiso Madinga made their appearance in the Bloekomhoek tent for the evening’s show was half an hour before curtain call. Madinga was sipping a beer right next to the bar at a long wooden table which would soon become filled with audience members as showtime drew closer.
Bezuidenhout whizzed around the tent between small groups of people that he either knew or was recognized by – he was so friendly to them it was hard to tell. This refreshingly laid-back, friendly and engaged approach was sustained through the night as they joked about, and with, the audience.
Madinga became a stand-up comedian five years ago and in a short space of time has nabbed both fans and gigs around the world. He is currently the Africa Correspondent for Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show.
Bezuidenhout started his comedy career just a year before Madinga did while he was a drama student at the University of Cape Town. He has had a stack of one-man shows which he has taken abroad and has acted in adverts, television series like Hotel and is a regular MC.
The two have both worked under Noah when they supported him on his 2014 NationWild Tour in South Africa.
The show began with both Madinga and Bezuidenhout on stage, but the audience members were the ones doing all the talking. But first, they were told to move closer to the stage and one another as stand-up comedy is all about “rubbing shoulders”, after all.
The duo casually singled out a few audience members whom they asked all sorts of questions and teased profusely to break the ice and make the stage feel as though it wasn’t such a pedestal.
The audience fell about laughing as they moved through the crowd. One Stellenbosch University student in the crowd was the only audience member who couldn’t understand Afrikaans and became the butt of many of Bezuidenhout’s jokes about the tensions and miscommunication between English and Afrikaans South Africans. However, he kept his skit in English to accommodate and include her.
Madinga ran off stage and Bezuidenhout had half an hour alone to show off his frantic re-enactments and spot-on accents and observations. He reminds one of Afrikaans musician and comedy performer Nataniël, who at times can be quite dead-pan and direct, but then Bezuidenhout bursts into an animated description and display of a Kurt Darren music video and the tannies who will support him till kingdom come.
He doesn’t shy away from hot topics or dirty jokes- he even pointed out that the supposedly “ordentlik” white tannies were the ones laughing the loudest when he brought out these gems.
Schalk Bezuidenhout is well-known for his zany outfits, afro and moustache- all of which have earned him the (self-given) nicknames of “Jersey Boy” and “Snorseun” which became the titles of two of his shows. PHOTO: Christi Nortier
Madinga came back on stage for his part of the show and he had everyone literally folded over double with laughter. He moved from topic to topic with ease and never once did a joke feel like it came out of the blue.
He too didn’t shy away from sensitive topics. He thanked the one and only black couple in the audience for being there, or else the show would have been “…an illegal gathering”.
Loyiso Madinga connected his personal anecdotes to broader issues in South Africa. He kept the crowd engaged while not making light of the serious topics. PHOTO: Christi Nortier
Both comedians showed a keen ability to engage with the crowd and read them in order to change their scripts as they went to suit the mood and taste of that night’s specific audience. Madinga paid testimony to this after the show when he commented that “The material is always changing. It depends on the crowd, where we are, how we feel, what we want to put out, what’s new- whatever we feel is right for the night.”
The duo have shared the stage many times before, from Aardklop to the National Arts Festival. It wasn’t their first time in Stellenbosch, but it was their debut at Woordfees.
Madinga says that audiences in Stellenbosch tend to be open to the arts and so are open to going through the experience and the journey with him. He says though, that the best type of audience is a listening one because even if they don’t like all the jokes, they are prepared to give the next one a chance.
One can see in Bezuidenhout and Madinga’s joint and separate performances that they take their comedy seriously as a form of expression which does not happen in a political, philosophical or social vacuum. When asked what the role of comedy is in South Africa’s public conversation space, Madinga replied:
“What Apartheid did successfully was separate people, so to this day we don’t know about each other. What comedy does is it allows us to start just hearing about each other. The arts do that, but comedy is much more of a direct conversation with people. So when I do stuff I try- not purposefully- but I try to be authentic because I know that that’s going to be something new to most people that I get to do comedy to.”
- Catch Schalk Bezuidenhout’s stand-up comedy during Woordfees on 8 March when he pairs up with John Vlismas, 8 March with Shimmy Isaacs and Melt Sieberhagen and 10 March with Casper de Vries and Hannes Brümmer.