Slices of humour and Kaaskrulle

As a rule IT lecturers are not known for drawing cartoons in their spare time. But this rule does not apply to University of Pretoria IT lecturer par excellence Willem-Jan Olwagen.

When Olwagen kicks off his shoes at home, he becomes WeeJee, the creator of popular Afrikaans comedy strip “Die Lewe is ‘n Kaaskrul”, one of the most original and entertaining comedy strips to appear in Afrikaans, a strip you will find in SA Promo every month.

Olwagen started drawing when he was only ten years old, inspired by comedy books like Tintin and Asterix. In fact, says Olwagen, these brilliant books and Disney Cartoons inspired his desire to become a cartoonist in his own right. It is for this reason that to this day he finds French cartoonist Albert Uderzo, the illustrator of Asterix, and the George Rémi, the Belgian illustrator of Tintin his biggest inspiration.

The concept for “Die Lewe is ’n Kaaskrul” came about almost by chance shortly after an Afrikaans newspaper youth supplement asked him to draw a weekly cartoon. It gave him the opportunity to merge his skill as cartoon illustrator with his love for the humour he found in Gary Larson’s single-panel comics "The Far Side" and the TV series "SpongeBob SquarePants".

These days, not a single day will pass without Olgawen not “seeing” a Kaaskrul opportunity. “Sometimes it will be two unrelated topics that I can see being funny in close proximity and at other times I can see a well-known expression being illustrated in an extremely literal way.” If this happens, he needs to grab the inspiration immediately and get it down on paper.

With the aim to one day publish a book, or even a series of books, Olwagen is developing fresh characters all the time. Ultimately he would like to develop more characters from a parody on student life in a science fiction environment he wrote as an unpublished book some time ago.

We just cannot wait… But in the mean time, we are enjoying every slice of his “kaaskrulle”.