Since 2010, Loyiso Gola had been delivering the news to South Africans with a straight face and a sharp edge. In October 2013 the rest of the world started paying attention. Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola, the satirical show on the eNCA news channel, was nominated for the International Emmy Award in the comedy category when nominations were announced on October 7.
LNN was created by Gola with comedian and filmmaker Kagiso Lediga and producer Tamsin Andersson, and co-produced by Diprente. Gola anchored, with support from comedian David Kibuuka and ventriloquist Conrad Koch, whose puppet Chester Missing became a political commentator in his own right. The show’s targets were the familiar ones of South African public life: politicians, scandals and the news cycle itself.
Its rivals for the award were Britain’s Moone Boy, France’s Workingirls and Brazil’s How to Enjoy the End of the World. At the gala at the Hilton New York on November 25, 2013, the prize went to Moone Boy. Still, being in that line-up was a real achievement for a late-night satire made for a South African news channel.
It was not a one-off. LNN was nominated again in 2014, and Gola’s profile kept rising internationally in the years that followed.
Our take
LNN’s nomination marked the point when African political comedy stopped being a local curiosity and started being judged alongside the best in the world. Gola and his team proved that sharp, specific satire about South Africa could travel. They also showed that a show built on local jokes could carry a global message. Losing to Moone Boy did not change that, and the generation of African satirists that followed owes it something.
Sources: Mail & Guardian, British Comedy Guide, The Citizen
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