Omkhula, the funniest guys I have ever seen

NOW that the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo 2014 edition has successfully come and gone, leaving the city with an "unforgettable" stamp of the beauty of the performing arts, I would like to take this opportunity to remember one of the greatest street comedy groups that ever graced the streets of the City of Kings and Queens.

I have said "one of the greatest," because there have also been several others too in the past, and also in the present as there will also be others in the future, and we also want to recognise them with the same breath before we get somebody complaining about bias or something like that.

The first time I saw Omkhula perfoming at Egodini, I nearly dismissed them as some crazy guys out to cheat people out of their hard-earned cash with a below standard performance.

The simple reason I dismissed them was that they were dressed in rags and looked like some vagrants, and I thought to myself, if you have something good to show people, do you have to do it looking so dirty?

Little did I know that this was an acting costume for them, and after their act, they would dress up in their proper clothes and go home to be fathers, uncles, and brothers to some people.

At that time I was still an amateur in theatre, and did not know much about street comedy and how it is conducted.

And so there I was on that first day, thinking that these guys in their rags and dirty looks were very unprofessional, for hadn't we been taught at school that if you are doing a job, you must be respectably dressed?

But then, I noticed the huge crowd around them, and holding back my reservations, I decided to stop and watch too.

Of course when the guys got going with their first act, a comedy about a certain lady musician who was very popular in Bulawayo at that time because of her mini-skirts and raunchy dances, suddenly I found myself entranced. The guys were the funniest I had ever seen or heard performing at Egodini, and the crowds were roaring with laughter. I soon found myself roaring with laughter too.

But of course Omkhula did not only make jokes about famous people who were not in the audience, this was their specialty, but they also made some about people who were right there in front of them, like one where they pointed at a security guard in uniform who was enjoying the jokes, and said a joke about him that was so embarrassing but also so funny that the security guy laughed too.

That was Omkhula. And as we know that standing in a crowd at Egodini sometimes is not safe for your pockets, especially if you have some money in them, Omkhula would take time to warn people to beware of those people who helped themselves to other people's pockets without kindly asking.

I thought that was good customer care, and then they would go on and add that they were warning their audience about pickpockets because they didn't want the audience to lose its money before throwing something into their money tin, otherwise they wouldn't have given the warning. Lol.

From that first day, I found myself stopping more often whenever I came across them either at Egodini or TM Hyper Terminus.

It was then that I also noticed that the guys were well organised despite their ragged costume. Their acts, which were often repeated, were not ragged like their costume, but were well executed and timed, and they had breaks where they waited for the old crowd to go away, and they would start again later with a new one, as this ensured they always had a new paying audience.

And they were adept in making their street audiences pay to watch too, and sometimes if you were unlucky and did not put anything into the money tin, the first joke would be on you and especially how you looked or were dressed. Kikikiki.

I hear some of these crude jokes got them punched by the audiences now and then, although I never witnessed that, but well, I guess that was part of the fun of being Omkhula.

But of course later they decided to migrate to South Africa, and I am not too sure how they are faring there, but their spirit of comedy lives on in the streets and theatres of the City Of Kings and Queens.