Picture it: South Africa, the late 1980’s. Bantustans are still a thing, and so is apartheid as an official government practice, but the cracks are beginning to show, and the heat is on from the rest of the world to evolve. There are only 2 TV channels in South Africa, and the vast majority of interest, funding and attention is of course focused on the white population and the two languages used by nearly all white people in South Africa – Afrikaans (about 60% of white people), and English (about 35-40%). TV wasn’t even introduced nationwide until 1975 – its delay was primarily due to the ruling government’s concerns that the rediffusion of mass media in a universal, democratic manner, for all to witness and watch, would expose the darkness of apartheid, as well as motivate others to ask more questions about a government that prefers a heavy-handed, paternalistic, top-down approach to law and order.

But white people are only about 20% of the population at the time, despite having the vast majority of wealth, land, influence and power. And while knowledge of the Afrikaans or English languages by the remaining 80% is very high, the programming coming from SABC barely even acknowledged their existence, much less cared to focus on their lives or portray them in a neutral or positive way.

By 1981, there were 3 channels – TV1 for Afrikaans and English, TV2 for Zulu and Xhosa, and TV3 for Sotho and Tswana. The programming on these latter two channels represented something very new in terms of TV anywhere – ethnic language programming in multiple languages within a larger nation.

To someone like myself, who has zero knowledge of any Zulu or Xhosa, Sotho or Tswana, and can limp along in Afrikaans, the programming is a mystery to me – no English subtitles are available for much of the South African programming back then, but I do know that through context, directly or indirectly, there is a ton to be learned from TV shows during this tender period of South African history.

The long-running, and apparently very beloved and successful sitcom Sgudi ‘Snaysi’ (It’s Good! It’s Nice!) is in the Zulu language, and it ran for almost a decade. Apparently the character Sdumo is iconic. This widespread renown seems to exist beyond solely the portion of the population that speaks Zulu (only about 25-30% of the population). So how did it become so popular outside this community?

I’m not sure, but the theme song and still shots alone are endlessly fascinating to me – I’m very curious how to watch these TV shows with a translation into English that takes into account cultural context and slang as well as the spirit of the times under late apartheid. For now, I just watch the intros, waiting with anticipation that someday I’ll be able to actually laugh at the jokes because I actually can follow the plotline.