The intersections of comedy and politics in Zimbabwe: analysing Baba Tencen’s ‘Borderphobia’ and Prosper Ngomashi’s ‘Pastor and his wives’

Abstract

This paper is a comparative explication of selected online Zimbabwean comedies as satire. It pursues the revolutionary character of the comedies against an increasingly limiting and impoverishing politico-economic environment. In our rendition, we depart from the general and simplistic thinking that comedy is solely for entertainment’s sake to view it as a puissant genre of art that is deployed not only to articulate big national issues but revolutionise consciousness given the danger of pacifying the people that goes along with oppression. The paper pursues the revolutionary agenda in the comedies as the comedians are inadvertently committed to the search for a breakthrough against a limiting and impoverishing politico-economic environment. Emerging out of this elucidation of comedies is that steeped in the comedies, is a sharp sense of resistance against oppression as well as an intense interest in liberating reflection and struggle. The centrepiece of the article is to comparatively engage Pepukai Zvemhari’s ‘Border phobia’ and Prosper Ngomashi’s ‘Pastor and his wives’ against the keen interest in lampooning those in charge of the affairs of the state for breeding trepidation and social phobia among the masses while on their part, life is decorated with profligacy and self-aggrandizement. The two comic skirts perfectly fall into the category of revolutionary art.