Roni Modimola is cool. Not cool like Braamfie boys in skinny jeans and shirt-dresses. Not cool like Camps Bay kids with comb-overs who pride themselves in liking everything ironically.
Modimola is cool as in everyone from gogos to comedy connoisseurs revere him for popularising the deadpan style and one-liner wit that’s undeniably kasi without a trace of coonery.
He’s also cool as in when I sit down with the man who became a household name in the early Naughties on the strength of Pure Monate Show (PMS) characters like Side Pocket and Inor Alomidom – he was reversing his name before there was a Rae Sremmurd – he doesn’t toot his own horn.
Modimola, who is one of the headliners of the Vernacular Spectacular in Joburg, speaks softly, but his sentences are sometimes punch-line heavy and often powerful. He tells me “being part of the Pure Monate Show was amazing. With that (sketch show) came the writing, which is something I enjoyed.”
Initially, Modimola wanted to be a film-maker and studied directing and script-writing at Afda. He later dropped out and quickly became a familiar face on the stand-up comedy circuit in the 1990s. As one of a few black faces on stage and particularly with his brand of deadpan funnies, it wasn’t hard to stand out.
“To be honest,” he starts, “the crowd back then wasn’t used to a black guy on stage. I’m talking about people whose only connection with black people was at work where there was no BEE. So I was seen as a smartass. I’d get lots of white people asking me, on a regular basis, if I write my own material. That used to annoy me, but it ebbed away when I started to get used to the idea that this is what I do.”
Then came TV stardom with PMS, which enjoyed a cult following, and a few stand-up shows and then he went quiet for a while.
“Along the way, I got cosmically bored with life,” he confesses, “and then maybe it was depression, but persistence is what distinguishes depression from just the pressures of life and it didn’t persist.”
He also busied himself with a land redistribution case in Limpopo, occasionally appearing on stages in vernacular comedy shows. Now, he’s back on form and ready to dig into the funny. “I find things exciting again,” he shares. “This is a talent I believe I was born with.” His talent includes making some of the most obscure scenarios hilarious.
“There are the usual targets that we as comedians victimise on stage – like politicians,” says Modimola, “but I like pulling away at an idea until something beautiful emerges. In an existential space is where you’ll find my kind of comedy.”
He also believes he’s in a unique position where “crowds feel sorry for me. There’s nothing about me that says I’m funny when you look at me. I walk on stage and people want to give me a hug. So my audiences alternate between this explosive high of laughter and a nervous discomfort.”
The discomfort might also be because Modimola hardly cracks a smile when on stage and his material is often morbid, but mirth-inducing. This happens when he performs in English, but especially in vernac.
“There’s a zeitgeist obsession with the English language and it’s accepted socially. But we have found a comfortable space in performing in our languages,” he says.
“We’re talking about things people know through their process of growing up. It’s a victory to be performing at that level.”
l Catch Roni Modimola, Mashabela and more at the Vernacular Spectacular, The Lyric Theatre, Gold Reef City, until Sunday. Tickets are priced from R165 at Computicket.