The past year or so has been quite amazing for Zimbabwean film production. It's been a time of many firsts, from Netflix to Shomax and now finally Amazon Prime. The sitcom Bazukuru is Zimbabwe's first tv series to be available on Amazon's streaming series and it's breaking new ground for Zimbabwean film as a whole.
Bazukuru is a bilingual series with the show title itself being a portmanteau made up of two words "bazukulu" (Ndebele) and "vazukuru" (Shona), the words for grandchildren in the respective languages. The comedy is presented in Ndebele and Shona. The production of Bazukuru was only completed a few months ago and the sitcoms was done on a very limited budget according to it's creator Kudzai Chikomo.
We were working on a shoestring budget, but a great team spirit, support from friends and family are making it all happen.
The storyline in the sitcom highlights several themes such as absent parents and generational gap challenges. Bazukuru tells the tale of an old man who's life is turned upside down when two of his grandchildren move in with him; a DJ who is in his late 20s and a school-going teenager, after their parents relocate to the United States of America.
The sitcom was written by Nkosilesisa Kwanele Ncube and directed by William Nyandoro with Rasquesity Keaitse directing photography. Cast members include Percy Soko, Antoinette Sango, Memory Kumbota Zenzo “Mzambane” Nyathi and Musa Sibanda.
Commenting on the sitcom in an interview, Chikomo said Bazukuru seeks to merge two formerly ignored genres, animation and situational comedy:
Locally, very little has been produced in terms of sitcoms, save for old productions such as Paraffin and Mukadota. There has not been much animation coming from the SADC region as well. The sitcom explores the lives of this unconventional family of three and their relationships within and outside the family. More importantly, the sitcom addresses the issue of a generational gap.