Durban – “There is something about smoke (wafting around) your head that’s cool. Why is that?” South African comedian Riaad Moosa has been pondering the image and allure of smoking to conjure up punchlines on the ills of tobacco use during his comedy tours.

“You can have a middle-aged, unimpactful dude, but if he stands outside and he’s smoking a cigarette, for some reason, there’s an aura of cool … why is this the case?” he says. “I would like to do a routine on this. If I can turn that into something that’s a few minutes long, through that entertaining piece I can inform people’s behaviour in some way.”

The 44-year-old is a qualified medical doctor but has built a career on the performance stage rather than in the operating theatre. Doffing the scrub suit for the frontstage to leave audiences in stitches was not a planned decision, says Moosa, who, in his stand-ups, tackles a variety of issues from stereotypes to prolapsed haemorrhoids to dangers of smoking.

“I’m against (smoking). So with all these things, as a doctor, I always talk negatively about it; but I joke about it. So it’s easier for me to do it and then I don’t make people feel bad about themselves. I exaggerate my persona as a doctor. I say, ‘You guys don’t listen to us’ and complain, and I make that funny. People take it. You hope that through that humour that people will become conscientized,” he says.

Moosa grew up in a family of non-smokers and believes that the family provides the right context to teach about the harms of tobacco use and deter children from picking up the habit later in life. Despite being brought up among in a home of non-smokers, he has suffered the pain of losing a loved-one due to causes linked to tobacco use. He reflects on a time when he tried to resuscitate a family member who had chronic obstructive airways disease.

“This was a result of heavy smoking. I wasn’t able to save the person. This was an experience in my life as a doctor that was soul-destroying, and it was the result of someone smoking excessively for a large portion of their lives,” Moosa says.

South Africa has a raft of tobacco control strategies. Its anti-tobacco legislation bans tobacco advertisements, smoking in public places and prohibits tobacco sales at health and educational establishments. On World No Tobacco Day on 31 May 2022, Cape Town, the country’s second-largest city announced that several public places will become smoke-free to curb tobacco use and create a healthier environment.

“Things need to happen at a family level. We need to talk about the dangers there of and continue to talk about it in that way. The message around it has been quite powerful. In my home we communicated very clearly about the dangers of tobacco and there was a constant dialogue between my parents and I regarding all those things,” says Moosa.

As smoking trends evolve, Moosa says he has noted vaping becoming common at entertainment venues he performs and makes it the butt of his jokes in the spirit of encouraging healthy living. “I’ll pick on people. That’s no problem if I think of something funny. My humour is not very accusatory. I want people to laugh with me.”

But he also reckons that as environmental protection and climate change campaigns get more intense, the more people become aware of the dangers of human-made disasters, including the environmental impacts of tobacco farming, production and consumption.

“We are experiencing real things that show climate change as opposed to something theoretical. People are becoming more aware. Hopefully this can inform better behaviour,” Moosa says.