Botswana comedian turns disability into laughter, self-acceptance and fame

Johnson Masase built his name by making an audience confront what it first assumed about him. Performing under the stage name Mr Mjohnie, the Botswana comic used jokes about his 3-foot-4-inch frame and a genetic condition to turn staring into laughter, and laughter into control.

Masase was part of Central Comedians, a trio formed during the COVID-19 pandemic to lift spirits in a country under strain. Alongside Sedireng Molatlhegi, known as Mr Lizard, and Sakie Malunga, known as Mr SA, Masase helped create a stage act that mixed vulnerability with timing. Molatlhegi and Masase lived with dwarfism, while Malunga stuttered, and the group’s act drew its force from refusing to hide the traits that strangers often treat as punchlines. Instead, the comedians made those differences part of the performance, seizing the awkwardness before anyone else could.

At 32, Masase had already gained local fame beyond comedy. His talent also took him outside Botswana’s entertainment circuit, where he was adjudged Best Graphic Designer in 2019 at the Makoya Entertainment Awards in South Africa. That detail matters because it places him not only as a performer but as a working creative with a broader artistic identity, one whose recognition was earned in more than one lane.

His story lands in a Botswana where disability has become a more explicit public policy issue, even as stigma and exclusion remain deeply rooted. Botswana acceded to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in July 2021, its revised national disability policy was approved by Parliament in September 2021, and the Persons with Disability Act was assented to on January 30, 2024. The law creates a Disability Coordination Office and a National Disability Council, and it prohibits discrimination on the grounds of disability while promoting equal opportunity in work, accommodation, education, goods, services, facilities and land.

The numbers show why the issue still matters. Statistics Botswana’s 2022 census profile recorded 55,344 people with disabilities, just over 2.5% of the population. A Botswana disability brief placed the 2011 figure at 2.9%, while UN-linked and advocacy reports have warned that under-reporting and weak data systems likely mean the real total is higher. Against that backdrop, Masase’s comedy does more than entertain. It turns visible difference into authorship, challenges public discomfort, and gives Botswana’s entertainment scene a performer who refuses to be defined by other people’s ignorance.