Abstract
More than 20 years since the birth of Nelson Mandela’s dream of a rainbow nation, race-thinking continues to be one of the most defining features of life in South Africa. From its centrality in the framing of concerns in the public domain to how it still directs public policy, the race categories conceptualised under apartheid are a driving force in how South Africans see themselves and relate to each other. This chapter explores how humour on social media, in the form of vlogs by satirist, Coconut Kelz, serves as a useful tool for critiquing the kind of race-thinking prevalent in South Africa. The argument is that by using mimicry and juxtaposition as rhetorical devices, these vlogs, which are shared widely, persuasively expose problematic perspectives prevalent in this context due to a type of race-thinking that views white people as superior.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abraham, K. M. (2017). Juxtaposition of selected themes in the book of Proverbs. Research Scholar, 5(1), 63–65. Accessed September 7, 2020. http://www.researchscholar.co.in/downloads/13-k.-mark-abraham.pdf
Amato, C. (2018). “Coconut Kelz is not ‘whiteface’ comedy, says joker Lesego Tlhabi.” Sunday Times, September 2. Retrieved September 5, 2020, from https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/2018-09-01-comedian-lesego-tlhabi-lifts-the-lid-on-the-life-of-a-coconut/.
Arendt, H. (1944). Race-thinking before racism. The Review of Politics, 6(1), 36–73. Accessed September 5, 2020. http://www.jstor.com/stable/1404080
Aristotle. 1994. Rhetoric. Translated by W Rhys Roberts. Retrieved September 6, 2020, from http://www.bocc.ubi.pt/pag/Aristotle-rhetoric.pdf.
Atluri, T. (2009). Lighten up?! Humour, race, and Da off colour joke of Ali G. Media, Culture & Society, 31(2), 197–214.
Becker, A. B. (2020). Applying mass communication frameworks to study humor’s impact: advancing the study of political satire. Annals of the International Communication Association, 44(3), 273–288.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Boukes, M. (2019). Agenda-setting with satire: How political satire increased TTIP’s saliency on the public, media, and political agenda. Political Communication, 36(3), 426–451.
Caufield, R.P. (2008). “The influence of “infoenterpropagainment”: Exploring the power of political satire as a distinct form of political humor.” In Laughing matters: Humor and American politics in the media age, by Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan S Morris, 3–20. : Routledge.
Chaudhary, A. R. (2015). Racialized incorporation: The effects of race and generational status on self-employment and industry-sector prestige in the United States. International Migration Review, 49(2), 318–354.
Coleman, R. (2000). African American viewers and the Black situation Comedy: Situating racial humour. Garland.
Condren, C. (2012). Satire and definition. Humor, 25(4), 375–399. Accessed September 5, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2012-0019
Dinç, E. (2012). On the Limits of Oppositional Humor: The Turkish Political Context. Middle East Journal of Culture & Communication, 5(3), 322–337.
Dyer, R. (1997). White. Routledge.
Filani, I. (2016). The use of mimicry in Nigerian stand-up comedy. Comedy Studies, 89–102.
Fletcher, M. D. (1987). Contemporary political satire: narrative strategies in the post-modern context. University Press of America.
Gray, J. (2006). Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody and Intertextuality. Routledge.
Griffin, D. H. (1994). Satire: A critical reintroduction. University Press of Kentucky.
Iwata, T. (2020). Political Satire and Laughter in Africa. In The Challenge of African Potentials: Conviviality, Informality and Futurity, by Yaw Ofosu-Kusi and Motoji Matsuda (pp. 143–168). Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group.
Jackman, M. R., & Crane, M. C. (1986). “Some of my best friends are Black…”: Interracial friendship and Whites’ racial attitudes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 50(4), 459–486.
Jawitz, J. (2012). Race and assessment practice in South Africa: Understanding black academic experience. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(4), 545–559.
Jones, M. O. (2017). Satire, social media and revolutionary cultural production in the Bahrain uprising: From utopian fiction to political satire. Communication and the Public, 2(2), 136–153.
Juzefovičs, J., & Vihalemm, T. (2020). Digital humor against essentialisation: Strategies of Baltic Russian-speaking social media users. Political Geography, 81, 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102204
LeBoeuf, M. 2007. “The Power of Ridicule: An Analysis of Satire.” Senior Honors Projects 63. Retrieved September 5, 2020, from https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=srhonorsprog
Lubbe, H. J. (1994). ‘Swart gevaar’ in beeld: visuele propaganda in Die Burger gedurende die parlementere verkiesingstryd van 1928 tot 1929. Kleio, 26(1), 27–44.
Maré, G. (2001). Race counts in contemporary South Africa:’an illusion of ordinariness. Transformation, 47, 75–93.
Molyneaux, H., O’Donnell, S., Gibson, K., & Singer, J. (2008). Exploring the gender divide on YouTube: An analysis of the creation and reception of vlogs. American Communication Journal, 10(2), 1–14.
Montgomery, K. (2005). Banal Race-thinking: Ties of blood, Canadian history textbooks and ethnic nationalism. Historica, 41(3), 313–336.
Ntwasa, T. (2019). “The rise—and rise of Coconut Kelz.” Sowetan Live, May 6. Retrieved September 5, 2020, from https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2019-05-06-the-rise-and-rise-of-coconut-kelz/.
Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2014). Racial formation in the United States. Routledge.
Peifer, J., & Taeyoung, L. 2019. “Satire and Journalism.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Retrieved September 2, 2020, from, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.871.
Rudwick, S. (2010). ‘Coconut’Notes: Discursive Constructions of Race Identity in South Africa. Oriental Archive, 78(1), 55–73.
Schwarzenegger, C., & Wagner, A. (2018). Can it be hate if it is fun? Discursive ensembles of hatred and laughter in extreme right satire on Facebook. SCM Studies in Communication and Media, 7(4), 473–498.
Tang, L., & Bhattacharya, S. (2011). Power and resistance: A case study of satire on the Internet. Sociological Research Online, 16(2), 10–18.
Van Baaren, R., Janssen, L., Chartrand, T. L., & Dijksterhuis, A. (2009). Where is the love? The social aspects of mimicry. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1528), 2381–2389.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2015). Racism and the Press. Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nkoala, S. (2021). The Curious Case of “Coconut Kelz”: Satire as a Critique of Race-Thinking in South Africa. In: Mpofu, S. (eds) The Politics of Laughter in the Social Media Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81969-9_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81969-9_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-81968-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-81969-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)