comedians-from-south-africa

"I was excited, and he was just as excited to work with me. It was confusing to me that someone like him would be impressed working with me"

"I’m not doing acting for fame or to be a celebrity. I do it because it’s a calling. I believe I was chosen to tell these stories and bring hope to people"

"Believe in yourself, Don’t lose your identity trying to fit in"

"I think I’m a pretty woke person. I’m pretty sensitive to the way people feel."

"The extra mile that I have to cover being a female improviser is that people are not used to seeing women on stage being funny so for a lot of shows, for the first ten minutes I have to kind of break that down or address it and get it off their minds so eventually they can just see me as a gender-neutral comedian. I have to spend time in making them get over the fact that I am a woman."

"Journalists ask us about being a female comedian, but they don’t talk to us for the work we’re doing, you know? No one really sees Kaneez as an improv artist–just that label of female comedian. And that’s the biggest challenge. People think my brand of comedy is ”˜female comedy’ but that’s not a brand of comedy”¦ Everyone defines me as a ”˜female comedian’ and I do so much more."

"I think with gender and sexuality, I definitely belong on a spectrum. Even with identity, I want to belong on a spectrum."

"You won’t believe but a lot of us women intentionally dress down because we just don’t want any distraction. We just want you to see us as gender neutral so we end up dressing down which is fine, it does not bother me but it is interesting that we have to do that."

"I love a role that I can ground somewhere in myself. There are actors who love to extend themselves, I like to find extensions of myself."

"I think it gave me my voice because I learned very quickly there isn’t a lot of help. We learned how to speak up for ourselves and how to identify micro-aggressions."

"When you go to certain schools and live a certain life, you’re going to have blind spots. Kelz helps me identify my own blind spots"

"I was like, if we are your friends and went to the same schools, why are these issues not important to you?"

"That’s what I try to do with Kelz – expose the racism that doesn’t sound like racism."

"I’m not thin. Being in this industry and being told ‘it’s difficult to imagine you in any role because you’re not thin’ was quite frustrating."

"We were some of the experimental kids of the new rainbow nation and we battled a lot"

"If you’re a chubby or plus-size girl or whatever you want to call it, you’re the comically funny friend. You’re always going to be that friend in the corner who’s like, ‘girrrl’ or whatever sassy little comment. It’s irritating."

"I think the ANC can feature in those things even if they are made up of black people"

"The thing that helped most of their peers get out was business, medicine and law. And there weren’t a lot of artists in their spaces who were able to make the money they made and give their children what they gave their children."

"I’ve seen these people in the ANC who just don’t care about the issues that affect less privileged people because they don’t have to care,” Lesego says."

"Because you will speak up about rhinos or puppies – of course you should – but why can’t you speak up about black people?"

"When I lived in South Africa, I was very nervous if people would laugh at me instead of with me."

"I think it’s easy to see when someone says the k-word or when someone is outwardly racist. Micro-aggressions are very difficult to pick up on."

"I understand being the first generation of black people who kind of made it out, my parents were very nervous about acting."

"I’ve been a bookseller, a call centre agent, backstage crew, I’ve done lighting and sound for Gearhouse, I’ve worked at Grahamstown as part of a production crew. Let’s put it this way: I’ve had jobs, but all of those were for paying rent."

"I think at the beginning, comedy was just an opportunity to earn money, especially after realising how good I was at it. But I didn’t think as far as making it an actual career out of it or realising my purpose through it. It only hit me when I did So You Think You Are Funny that there is something bigger than what I had perceived."

"They can expect a dope comedy show because it will have other comedians and seeing a full capacity (audience) will excite us as comedians."

"I don’t want to hustle and be number one or be on top of any list anymore but I mean, if it happens it happens. I want to live a good life and I am learning to rest. Not that I am stopping work, no but I am prioritising,” she says, adding that having nothing that ties her down like a husband or a child has led her to move even when not necessary."

"Of course Ben Carson advisors can't make him smart, you can't change its brain. That's a job for a neurosurgeon. It's the same when your barber has a #### haircut."

"Ben Carson: for people who like Donald Trump's ideas, but hate his charm and charisma. Ben Carson is like the drug free cocaine for people who don't wanna get high but just like snorting white powder."

"The weird thing is, I always say to people, "When you're poor, being poor sucks. But being poor together makes it a lot better." Right? Because you're in it together. And it doesn't discount the fact that you don't have much. But then you start to enjoy the things that you do have. And that is each other. And so we laughed. We enjoyed ourselves. We had something that sometimes you don't have when you have too much. And that is the ability to focus on the human beings around you."

"I think, again, as an old person, you should have a dignified end. You know? And I think we've robbed old people of that in society, y'know, like Capitalism and whatever. It's like, no, it's nice to, like, "You go, you've live your life, you've done your thing, and you can relax now.""

"And that is a problem I have with, like, a lot of American political spin -- they try and tell you that what you're seeing is not what you're seeing."

"I think the most important thing is to instantly give them a sense of who you are and how you feel in that moment. If a speaker is nervous and tells the audience that, people immediately contextualize it and respond accordingly. If a performer is in a good mood or feeling wild and crazy and says so, I’ve found, the crowd will be good at matching that energy. So for me, the rapport is built by a genuineness conveyed as quickly as possible."

"You know what the problem in America is? It's that white people call the police like they're asking for the manager. It's like, "this is unacceptable, I demand to see someone who might shoot you"."

"[If] you read the news once a week, I promise you, you'll be as informed as somebody who's reading it every single day. You know why? 'Cause when you're reading it every day, you are caught in the cycle of it trying to discover what it doesn't know yet."

"I learned so many things at The Daily Show, I'm eternally grateful for them... but I also would like to learn more things? Even in the years I haven't been there, I've re-learned and re-remembered that politics isn't a binary. It's not blue and red, that's an illusion. There aren't two ideas for every problems, that's fake. There are a multitude of ways to discuss any issue and any topic. But if you stay in one place for long enough, then in a good way and in a bad way, you start to perceive that as reality. [...] All my friends that are South African were trapped in South Africa, couldn't leave, couldn't come to me, I couldn't go to them. Couldn't see my family. And I wasn't even big on that, it's not even that I was like "Oh, I've gotta go home to see my family," I just go when I'll go. But now, I realized, I was like, wow! This is just-- again, it's fleeting. And I had to ask myself "Trevor, what are you trying to achieve in your life? Where do you want it to go? Where do you want it to end, y'know? What's more important to you? The ratings on the success of this show and this idea, or the ratings on the success of your friendships and your relationships?""

"For any comedian, your life informs your point of view, the way you see the world. My comedy comes through the prism of race or class, because those are two worlds that collided for me growing up. And I guess that’s served me well, because those themes cross over countries and continents. We’re all still dealing with those issues today."

"I hear people all the time go like "I'm gonna put my head down and I'm gonna crush it!" Okay, alone? Good luck."

"[Interviewer: When you say you "wouldn't be here" with me, what do you mean by that?] You wouldn't be calling me here to have an interview with me, because I wouldn't have done the things that I've done. Because I couldn't have done them alone. Because nobody could have done them alone. Nobody has done the things they've done alone, you know? Like, everyone-- I've seen people tell these stories of climbing Mount Everest and Maya-san, and-- Yo, all those sherpas that went with you, let's talk about them. No one's climbing Everest alone! No one's discovering, y'know, the, the South Pole alone! No, you weren't! In fact, the guy who first navigated the South Pole was led there by somebody, you know what I mean?"

"I spend most of my day screaming — and then over time I get tired and then when I'm tired, I start thinking of the jokes. … That's what I always loved about comedy, it is a way for us to just, you know, to numb the pain, to process what we're going through without feeling every single inkling of it."

"I feel bad for anyone in private insurance who's scared of losing their job. But on the other hand, screw private insurance! I'm sorry, insurance companies are assholes."

"The part where we say who's good and who's bad and who started-- let's-- let's step away from that and instead ask a different question: Instead, let's look at who's dead and who's alive this week."

"Maybe we need to change who gets the Nobel Peace Prize, and when. Because so many people have won the prize and they've benefitted from all of its prestige, and then they've gone on to not be peaceful. Like, maybe we should only give the Nobel Peace Prize to people after their career is over and they've passed away, right? It's at the end. We can call it the "Rest in Peace Prize." Then we know you're not gonna surprise us, you're not gonna hurt anyone. Unless someone trips on your grave."

"Donald Trump sees the presidency the same way he sees one of his companies: its whole purpose is to serve him and only him. [...] the whole purpose of the Justice Department, which he thinks is not to uphold law. No, no, no, it's to do the president's bidding. The same way he probably thinks the purpose of the Energy Department is to charge his iPhone. [...] The only thing more shocking than his autocratic view of power is his willingness to talk so openly about it. In a strange way Donald Trump is both the most honest and dishonest president of all time. I figured it out, people. He's not cinnamon Hitler, he's Abraham Nixon."

"I think sometimes it's hard for us to think about the possibility of a better future because we haven't lived in it."

"At this point, it's not even a high-level controversy. This isn't House of Cards. Like, this isn't even Veep. It wouldn't even qualify for Blue's Clues."

"This idea that black people should be grateful is some sneaky-ass racism. Yeah, because when a white billionaire spends a year screaming that America is a disaster, he's in touch with the country. But when a black man kneels quietly, he should be grateful for the successes America has allowed him to have? [...] It almost feels like white people earn the money, but black people are given it."

"You still haven't told us the right way for black people to protest. I mean, we know: it's wrong to do it in the streets, it's wrong to do it in the tweets. You cannot do it on the field, you cannot do it if you've kneelt. And don't do it if you're rich, you ungrateful son of a bitch. Because there's one thing that's a fact, you cannot protest if you're black."

"This is what I find weird in these arguments, it's that people go "they're not African, they're French". Then I'm like, why can't they be both? Right? Why is that duality only afforded to a select group of people? Why can they not be African? So what they're arguing here is, in order to be French, you have to erase everything that is African?"

"He really is a TV president. [...] He loves the performance of doing things. But a lot of the time, nothing's actually being done. Essentially, Donald Trump wants to be president, but he doesn't want to do president."