Laughing with Trevor Noah to hide pain

South Africa is a joke… or at least the way we – and particularly our politicians – conduct ourselves in our daily lives is manna from heaven for comedians.

And, when the going gets tough, as it has been progressively for the past few years now, then SA’s tough get going. We laugh at ourselves and we laugh with ourselves.

Few do it better for us than our homeboy Trevor Noah, who has just picked up an Emmy Award in the United States for Outstanding Talk Series.

WATCH: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah nabs Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Series

This despite managing to ruffle more than a few feathers in his second home, though, because one thing Noah does with sacred cows is braai them… and not all of his American audience was, let’s say, comfortable with that.

They could have learned from the Brits and the French who have been among many skewered by his razor-sharp tongue. Here, we laugh at him, perhaps to hide the pain from the joke being so close to the reality.

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When discussing the chances of Bafana Bafana – perhaps our finest national joke – Noah once said: “That’s the nice thing about being South African, our hearts have been pre-broken. We don’t have hope.”

No, Trevor, your gags bring us the light of hope.