Up until a few years ago, the woman known as one of the few “queens of comedy” in Africa was a primary school teacher in East London, on South Africa’s southeast coast.
Khanyisa Bunu is convinced that her former career “set the tone” for her pursuit of comedy as a way to make a living.
“A school is a serious place but it’s also a place where there is much laughter, always something funny happening,” said Bunu.
By way of illustrating her statement, she recalled one of the incidents that sparked her decision to abandon teaching.
“There was a lady who would come to our home and my mother and her would fix clothes together. One day they sewed some nice pants for me. It was a brown jean. I was very excited when this lady told me she was going to make my jean look very special…”
Bunu said the seamstress then splashed bleach, known as in South Africa, on her pants “to make patterns like a leopard print.”
Bunu was so impressed that she wore the pants to school the next morning...with hilarious results.
“As I was standing there in front of the kids conducting the morning prayers I could see the damage that was done by the jik. I could see my panties. I could see that there were holes in that pants and the holes were growing! And I could see [the kids] were all smiling, some giggling behind [me]. I dropped the Bible; I put it down and left the morning session!” she explained, laughing.
However, after overcoming “shock and embarrassment,” Bunu said she began to realize “something profound.”
“I stood there in the cloakroom phoning a friend to bring me another pants and I just burst out laughing at how absurd the situation was. I started thinking, ‘Khanyisa, you actually enjoyed having all those kids laugh at you; you’ve always enjoyed making people laugh…’”
A few months later, Bunu quit her teaching job and departed for Johannesburg, where she was determined to “make it” as a comedian.
“I enjoyed my time as a school teacher even though I could feel that I didn’t belong there. The space for me, it was too small,” she said. “I wanted a bigger space where I can be comfortable and relaxed and express myself the way I want to express myself. You know when you are a teacher there are rules, there are things you can say and things you can’t say. But when you are a comedian life is what you want it to be…”
But, as she battled for recognition as a standup comic in an unforgiving city, life wasn’t initially what Bunu wanted it to be.
“The main challenge was that I didn’t know how to begin a career as a comedian. I would see all these funny people up on stage and I would say, ‘I am sure I can do that.’ But I didn’t know how to launch myself.”
Then some comedians in Johannesburg advised her to start performing at open mic evenings at certain venues in the city.
“I did this and then I would wait for someone to call me after a performance but no one ever did,” she stated. “But I kept on pushing, kept on pushing, until today when I sit down and see an email – there’s a booking and I have to go and perform somewhere…”
And perform Bunu most certainly does – relentlessly, and not afraid to crack jokes about subjects others mostly avoid.
At a recent appearance in a stronghold of the ruling African National Congress, the ANC, she turned her tongue on the party’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe.
“You know Gwede would walk in here and say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! I’m going to kill all of you – not directly, but through hunger, unemployment and corruption!’ Yay! Gwede! Yay!” shouted Bunu.
She was satirizing the fickleness of many South Africans who complain about the “incompetence and corruption” of the ANC government…yet vote en masse for it during elections.
In an interview with VOA following a recent show Bunu agreed that there are “few, if any” subjects that she considers taboo. “Irreverence rules,” she said, smiling broadly.
“What is this ‘other?’” Bunu asked the audience during her performance. “Like when you are filling in forms, they ask your name and then they go like, ‘Male’, ‘Female’ … and ‘Other…’ And you start wondering, what is the ‘Other’? And sometimes out of curiosity you cross the ‘Other’ … And imagine the person reading it [thinking], ‘Could this be another Caster Semenya?’”
South African athlete Semenya won gold in the women’s 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. But controversy followed when the International Association of Athletics Federations compelled her to undergo a gender test, after questions were raised about the muscular athlete’s gender.
Semenya was subsequently cleared to compete internationally as a female athlete.