Simuka Comedy Festival ends on a high note
By Bustop TV
The inaugural Simuka Comedy Festival closed on Sunday November 29, following a fiesta of great comedians in the country.
Munya, famous for her portrayal of Advocate Fadzayi Mahere on Magamba TV, Tinaye Wayne, Kadem, Clive Chigubhu, Ckhanyiso Dat Guy, Simba and Mandla Da Comedian formed part of the star studded line up.
Day 2 of the festival saw comedians giving out performances themed around leadership. The comedians were up to the task but it was Mandla’s performance that touched the most.
During his set, he dwelt on how people have been deprived of their basic needs due to bad leadership. His boldest line was when he demystified the tribal divide in the country.
Mandla said, “Have you ever seen how awesome it is when you mix Shona people and Ndebele people, greatness chete (only greatness). You and I have a role to play.”
He also took a dig at how Bulawayo City Council is being poorly run and effects of the water crisis in the city.
“Everytime I come to Harare we will be having this crisis in Bulawayo and it’s the water crisis. When Zimbabwe is having a crisis, in Bulawayo it’s like we a side crisis. Our leaders always come with solutions, in 2017 for example, we prayed to God and water came. But this time they decided that maybe because our prayers are no longer being answered so they resorted to a dangerous solution. They have turned to this dam they had decommissioned because it is not good for human consumption, Khami dam. Us in Bulawayo have to embrace that saying which goes like ‘one man’s sewer is another man’s water’.”
His performance was capped by a call for unity and finding ways to change the situation in the country.
“We give all our energy to support them but in return they make your life so miserable. They even blame you for making your life so miserable. It’s time we stand up and speak about it.”
Meanwhile, organiser of the event Doc Vikela described the festival as a ‘huge success’.
Doc Vikela said, “The festival was a huge success we managed to accomplish all our objectives which were to celebrate comedy in its different forms, to appreciate the efforts of the Simuka team and opportunity creation. We have the likes of Cde Muchapera Mabhuku, Confessions and we had things were experimenting with and people responded very well. We had people we taught comedy and shot skits of them. We managed to workshop them during the festival. We had people from out of the country joining us for the festival workshops. We had a challenges of our power outages. But it was not that big. For data and other needs we had partners like Hivos, Culture Fund supported by EU and Magamba. People are still watching which, to us, shows that it was a huge success.”
The festival will be back again next year as the organisers intend to host it annually.
