Awarding SA's funniest folk

In its second year, the SA Comedy Awards honours the talents of comedians, playwrights, journalists and others by acknowledging the cultural contribution made by our funniest men and women across the spectrum of performance, print and broadcast media.

Jonathan Shapiro aka Zapiro, who is causing quite a media storm with his highly controversial cartoon depiction of Jacob Zuma that was published in Sunday Times over the weekend, walked off with the award for Outstanding Humorist Cartoon.

The other winners in the remaining nine categories were:

• Best Television Performance: Shaeleen Tobin for her role as Patience in The Coconuts
  
• Best SA Television Comedy: The Coconuts produced by ATTV for MNet
  
• Best Comedic Play: The Insatiables written by Tim Plewman & Jonathan Rands and directed by Clare Stopford
  
• Best One Person Show: Rea Rangaka in Bafana Republic: Extra Time written by Mike van Graan and directed by Francios Toerien
  
• Best Stand-up Comedian of the year: Nik Rabinowitz
  
• Outstanding Humorist Columnist: James Clarke for Wild Page in Getaway Magazine
  
• Best Breakthough Act: Trevor Noah

Sam Hendrikse, CEO and organiser of the event, said: “We are witnessing a significant improvement across all the comedic disciplines within South Africa from standup, television, cartoons and columns to plays.

“We are thrilled at the calibre of comedian nominated for this year's awards as well as the performances this evening.”

Even Cape Town's mayor, Helen Zille, who presented ‘on behalf of' Mark Lottering who ‘was stuck' at OR Tambo International, made fun of the political headquarters of Cape Town being the real centre of the SA Comedy World, receiving a very warm welcome by the audience.

Outstanding Contribution to South African Comedy

The grande finale of the evening was the announcement of Leon Schuster as the winner of the award for Outstanding Contribution to South African Comedy. South Africa's beloved filmmaker, comedian and actor, this boy from Vereeniging began his career in radio, filming over eight feature films and is accredited with the highest grossing SA film ever plus a host of music albums to his name. The 2007 Outstanding Contribution Award was given to satirist Pieter Dirk-Uys who presented an award on the night for Best Breakthrough Act.

The SA Comedy Awards will be screened on SABC 2 on Saturday, 13 September at 8pm.

For more information, visit: http://www.sacomedyawards.com/