Letlhogonolo Mogale, who binged the show days after its release, described Jonasi as an “serial cheater” and “opportunist who would do anything to satisfy himself”.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old is not from a polygamist family herself, nonetheless The Polygamist’s storyline resonated and highlighted “social ills that happen and [are] normalised in South Africa”.<\/p>\n
“What stuck out for me personally was how broken families are and how broken society is,” she told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Polygamy is legally recognised in South Africa and within Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Venda cultures, among others, it is not uncommon for a man to have multiple wives – as happens in some other African and Muslim societies.<\/p>\n
The women tend to be set up in their own households though there is usually co-operation between co-wives in terms of child-rearing – something that can be less realistic in urban settings.<\/p>\n
For Mogale the polygamy in the show is duplicitous, secretive and “forced”.<\/p>\n
It is “not supposed to be that way”, she said, adding that the scene that best illustrated this was between Jonasi and his eldest daughter Mpume.<\/p>\n
Jonasi has six children altogether, with three women, and is closest to Mpume who is known as “Daddy’s Girl”.<\/p>\n
But as a teenager, broken by her father’s deceit, neglect and unfaithfulness, Mpume tries to express her feelings in a letter that she starts to read out loud to him.<\/p>\n
His reaction – turning up the volume on the TV and ignoring her – stunned many, including Mogale.<\/p>\n
The show does not shy away from tackling other issues such as sexually transmitted diseases, gender-based violence and the trauma these often inflict on African families.<\/p>\n
There is also a controversial plotline about HIV.<\/p>\n
With 13% of South Africa’s population living with the virus \u2013 polygamous unions have divided opinion in the country with many pointing to the dangers plural families face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Letlhogonolo Mogale, who binged the show days after its release, described Jonasi as an “serial cheater” and “opportunist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-660752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}