South African Political Clowning Laughter and Resistance to Apartheid
( South Africa: Twentieth Century)
In the twentieth century the Union of South Africa offers no single clown figure as representative of the black and colored peoples' battle against apartheid. Yet a powerful presence in this struggle is the variety of clown figures mocking the absurdity of the dominant white order.12
Battered by the long-term effects of racial injustice and political violence, South Africans display a sense of humor that is rooted in their will to survive. Their laughter signals a refusal to surrender their lives, their identities, or their dignity to the dehumanizing tyranny of apartheid and its aftermath. The slow and painful transition from institutionalized racism to a black majority government has been lubricated by a remarkable outpouring of ridicule, mockery, and mirth. The darkly comic aspects of South African public discourse can be found in newspaper headlines, political speeches, theater performances, protest demonstrations, and the graffiti that are scrawled on the country's walls.
Laughter in South Africa is part of the process through which blacks and whites come to terms with the brutal facts of their political landscape. In the absence of mutually agreeable solutions to their problems, they answer each other's challenges with taunting one-liners. When it became clear that white South Africans were terrified by the idea of giving equal rights to the black majority, the Pan African Congress developed a ghoulish slogan that parodied the unfulfilled promise of "one man, one vote." The militant black organization