Kau keeps the black funny flowing

David Kau's successful Blacks Only comedy brand is now so successful it effectively runs itself, and over this past weekend it celebrated a decade of launching many a career.

Kau, who began his career at 44 as the only black comedian at the 1998 Smirnoff Comedy Festival, launched the brand after growing disillusioned with the lack of space for black comics to perform in their own languages.

Kau and friends celebrated the milestone with a show at Emperors Palace in Kempton Park.

Kagiso "KG" Mokgadi, who was awarded the breakthrough act gong at the Fourth Annual SA Comic's Choice Awards, said, "every successful black comedian in this country has been on this stage".

Kagiso Lediga reflected on the growth of Blacks Only, saying, "I'm appreciating that, at some point, I used to know every comedian in the country, and now I see a guy on stage blazing, and I'm like, who's this guy?"

Other acts to hit the Blacks Only stage were the man behind the popular Chester Missing, Conrad Koch, Sifiso Nene and Mdu Ntuli.

Koch, who has known Kau since he was at the University of Cape Town, said Blacks Only was an evolution of Kau's story.

"He managed to structure a black culture of comedy that didn't shape itself around whiteness," he said.