Of Coffee With Mukoma Bruce

If you were having coffee with me I would welcome you to my corner of the internet, we have a fire going and some hot hugs in mugs to put some fire in your belly. The weather forecast shows we have the type of weather that I used to imagine only happens overseas, rain in winter. Zimbabweans abroad tend to laugh at us who haven’t had exposure, on how we don’t know winter.

Anywoo, all my life, I have always wintered where I summered. 😂 Growing up, I used to dream of travelling the world or more specifically I used to wish I had super powers, like the power of flight, teleportation maybe super speed that would allow me to travel.

I was, still am too, a big fan of superheroes and imagine that one day I might somehow unlock a super-power. As a child, I ran around with a large red bathing towel around my neck serving as a cape, pretending I was superman. Oh the (mis)adventures we had. A hilarious blog post on Chronicles Of Growing Up On Superhero Movies had me going down memory lane of some my childhood antiques which were tame in comparison… Still, it taught us to dream, what if….

What if I were a superhero?

If I was Batman I don’t think that I would have kept secret for longer than two minutes.

The next morning I would have been pamusika wepacorner talking about “problem yenyu ndeyekuti hamutende…”

— 👑 Kandoro (@KingKandoro) August 5, 2018

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that a few years back, comedian King Kandoro shared his thoughts on being the Caped Crusader. What if he were Batman, how would he handle it? What would a Zimbabwean Batman turn out like?

What had started off as a whimsical tweet became a script and now we have the pilot episode of Mukoma Bruce…

Why Batman? King Kandoro revealed to TechZim that “Batman doesn’t have the stress of figuring out supernatural things like flying, or shooting webs. He’s basically an overzealous guy who took matters into his own hands. So now make that any guy from Mabvuku”

*Beyond the use of character names and the batman inspiration this project is not modelled around any particular batman movie or comic.

King Kandoro wanted this project to showcase his range as an artist, performer and writer, while also offering something to laugh about in these rather depressing times; an exciting challenge from his usual political satire. The show was created with the support of a startup corporation Shumba Money.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that the pilot episode had me in stitches starting from when Mukoma Bruce pounces on two robbers and introduces himself as Vengeance.

The subtitles are also a laugh and a half as they try to navigate the nuances between the subtext of ghetto lingo while also inventing adjectives that just hit the mark.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that sometimes the world just needs a bit of laughter to clear away the cobwebs – and for a little while forget about all the craziness, inflation, crime, and injustice. Do check out the pilot episode and then we can wait to see what shenanigans Mukoma Bruce gets up to dealing with our power cuts, fuel shortages, protecting the world while trying to find love.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that Mukoma Bruce is not the first superhero series to grace ZImbabwe’s creative space, beat boxer slash rapper ProBeatz starred in Captain Mfombi, Zimbabwe’s first web series about a ghetto superhero. The show had quite the following during the 2021 lockdown.

I hope we can have a crossover showdown similar to Batman versus Superman but this time it would be Mukoma Bruce vs Captain Mfombi. 😂

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that at times I have wished if our totems were superpowers that could be summoned, I would be the one throwing fireballs, possibly fly, what about you?

What’s been going on in your neck of the woods? Did you ever want to be a superhero or if you had a superpower what would it be?

~B

Week 5 WinterABC: Stories of Innovation

PS Batman is really just overzealous guy isn’t he? He doesn’t have super powers be it by virtue of being a descendant of powerful race be it local or alien or being beaten by radioactive spiders or being blasted by gamma rays or injected with super serum- he is just a man.