The Polygamist: Netflix ‘supernovella’ tops Madlanga Commission as national conversation

While the Madlanga Commission reached peak season in South Africa in early June with unexpected and consequential twists and turns for the powerful and corrupt, the fictional The Polygamist has entered the intimacy of the domestic space, familiar to all and sparking a national debate.

On 12 June, the long-awaited series was released on Netflix and within four days shot to the top slot as South Africans and others across the continent began to debate myriad issues highlighted by the entwined narratives.

Polygamy (naturally) features, as does infidelity, patriarchal privilege, domestic violence, class, sex, the power imbalance in transactional relationships and most importantly, the emotional collateral damage wreaked on children of a present but absent father.

And then there are the women.

Cut-and-paste polygamy

Zimbabwean-born Nyathi has spoken about the type of polygamy she has written about as cut-and-paste when a man justifies a range of transgressions in the name of culture. This we are familiar with in South Africa.

The Polygamist, written in 2012, was self-published and the author has since gone on to pen the popular The Gold Diggers, A Family Affair, An Angel’s Demise and Rubies and Rain.

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Nyati is a keen observer of contemporary African life and her novels do not shy away from the challenges and hurdles women face in a patriarchal society. These are the Tradwives of South Africa, as opposed to the Tradwives of the US, who also live by an impossible 1950s ideal of woman and motherhood,

Stories and series about polygamy are not new in this country – Mzansi Magic’s Uthando Nes’thembu, a reality series based on the life of businessmen Musa Mseleku and his four/five wives, has been streaming since 2017.

The creative collaboration between Nyathi and the production team, including director Akin Omotoso, with Gugu Zuma-Ncube, Thuli Zuma and Pepsi Pokane as executive producers, Lorato Phefo as writer and Fahiema Hendricks as director of photography, has provided this scorching drama with the sparks to connect an audience left reeling.

And it is the embodiment of each of Nyathi’s characters by this stellar cast, thrown together in a bowl like cake mix, that gives this series its feeling of intimacy and immediacy. Be warned, cancel all plans should you embark on a binge watch.

You are in the room

Things are so close it is as if the viewer is in the room when isoka (a playboy) and man about town Jonasi Gomora comes a-calling, with his bedroom eyes, fine clothes and seductive advances. Jonasi is a man many have encountered in real life.

The series begins as Joyce, played by Gugu Gumede with a mix of dignified rage and regal revenge, dramatically arrives at Jonasi’s funeral. We begin at the end to unravel a story with many rivers and waterfalls to cross.

MaJoyce, mother of son Menzi (superbly played by Wonder Ndlovu) and daughter Mpume (the stellar Noluthando Shabalala), was there when Jonasi built up his business empire, J&J, and was under the impression she was in a monogamous marriage.

But Gomora plays by his own rules. The character is rendered so thoroughly convincingly by S’dumo Mtshali that he might have to perform a ritual to shake off the callous charm of the central character that has been etched into the public imagination.

Enter Matipa Nkosi (Kwanele Mthethwa), lithe corporate climber, former lover of Jonasi’s brother Magesh (played by everyone’s favourite uncle, Kenneth Nkosi) who enjoys the finer things Jonasi brings. Their relationship yields twins who are cast into the families’ currents.

But you see, even before MaJoyce and Matipa there was Essie, brought to fiery and vulnerable life by Celeste Ntuli. Essie has the township smarts of a woman who has tangled with the smooth-talking Jonasi in the past, when he was still a township nobody. Loyal and patient, Essie bides her time.

Her existence has been hidden in a sham marriage to Magesh who also sacrifices his own life to support his younger brother’s betrayal, hypocrisy and secrets. Children left behind because of this union feel the brunt of neglect, judgement and indifference.

Mpume brings to the Gomora mansion a young friend, Lindani Batha (Luyanda Zwane) who is seduced by the entitled old man, even under MaJoyce’s roof, a relationship which later explodes like a depth charge.

The wreckage

Anyone who might have been lured by the social media posts by prominent African polygamous families in elated union will experience in The Polygamist the harsh and cruel realities of this choice of marriage. And it is this that has got people onto the socials.

Across platforms men expressed how shocking the patriarch’s sociopathic cruelty and violence are revealed, while thousands of women unburdened themselves about these destructive “playboys” – often fatherless men who leave fatherless children.

Nyathi and the collaborative creators on this series have been able to render this tragedy so vividly as this is a lived reality for many. Any mother watching the series will understand the heartbreak of children favoured and children neglected, children vilified and children spoilt, children guilty by association, children embraced as family stars, children rejected.

The Polygamist will alter your perspective of the silent lives of women who find themselves one of many, and the hurts and deep resentments that bubble and boil.

Most interestingly and importantly, the Department of Transport and Community Safety in Limpopo has leveraged issues in The Polygamist in a campaign against gender-based violence and femicide, with the banner: “He said money buys love. Gifts buy loyalty. Control buys obedience.”

MEC Violet Mathye is quoted: “No woman should stay in an abusive relationship out of fear of losing material things. The cost is your dignity, your peace, and your children’s future. Children learn what they live. Violence at home teaches violence outside the home.”

The final tagline reads: “The Polygamist shows fiction, GBVF shows consequences. Break the cycle”. DM