<\/p>\n
The Polygamist is a Netflix series that has soared up the streaming platform\u2019s charts and triggered a global conversation about men who cheat in relationships.<\/p>\n
It tracks the fatal ruptures in what seems like a successful upper class family, the Gomoras. Although the story plays out in South Africa, the series is adapted from Zimbabwean author Sue Nyathi\u2019s self-published novella.<\/p>\n
It opens at the funeral of Jonasi Gomora, a self-made man and charismatic banking executive. Flashbacks reveal how his respectable and carefully constructed life falls apart when his social influencer wife Joyce finds out about his secret second wife, his mistress, and several other relationships.<\/p>\n
On the surface, The Polygamist shows how the insatiable drive for power and pleasure destroys the hopes of Black success that are meant to be the fruits of democracy, education and class advancement in South Africa after apartheid formally ended in 1994.<\/p>\n
I am a sociologist who studies intimacy in Black communities. In a recent book I edited, I analysed how themes like the ones explored in The Polygamist \u2013 money, social class and intimacy \u2013 often create conflict between traditional values and modern notions introduced by colonial systems.<\/p>\n
For me, the series adds much-needed complexity to discussions about polygamy (the custom of marriage to multiple wives). It shows the hangover of colonialism and how Black South Africans continue to struggle with \u201cmultiple consciousness\u201d (conflicting identities and fragmented cultural realities in a new society).<\/p>\n
In this article I discuss four of what I regard as the most interesting themes emerging from the series. They\u2019re also some of the reasons why many African viewers are so taken with it and having deeper conversations about it.<\/p>\n
Read: Streaming TV booms in SA<\/p>\n
1. Hidden histories<\/p>\n
The Polygamist brilliantly highlights the hidden histories of polygamy. Like South Africa, many sub-Saharan African countries, from Senegal to Zimbabwe, have long, complex histories of polygamy.<\/p>\n
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This value system was not about hetero patriarchy (men in charge of everything), but the protection and maintenance of African families.<\/p>\n
In precolonial African contexts, men took multiple wives for economic and political reasons, as well as the maintenance of values around caring for widows and orphans.<\/p>\n
From the 1800s, encounters with colonial European thinking eroded polygamy as a value system. In its place came Christian values, Dutch law and urbanisation.<\/p>\n
Europeans valued monogamy (a relationship with one partner) while polygamy was regarded as harmful and immoral, a system for heathens. The customary system was gradually polluted with secrecy, loss, misuse of power, displacement of children and violence against women.<\/p>\n
Even though polygamy is protected under South African law, it never really survived the onslaught of capitalism and coloniality. In The Polygamist, this is made visible in how Jonasi navigates his relationship with his childhood sweetheart and second wife Essie.<\/p>\n
He marries her without the first wife\u2019s knowledge and consensus. This is clearly abuse of power. The rules governing traditional polygamy foreground respect, communication and accountability. By leaving Joyce out of the decision, he takes away her power and makes it his own.<\/p>\n
2. Conceding to polygamy<\/p>\n
On finding out about the full circumstances of Jonasi\u2019s affair with a younger woman called Matipa, Joyce is forced to make a decision if she is to protect her marriage, her access to the legacy she helped build and her children\u2019s inheritance.<\/p>\n
A decision to concede to polygamy is not an easy one. Joyce is aware of its contradictions, how weak it makes her look, how it might not end with a second wife and might lead to more wives.<\/p>\n
Even though this dilemma is taxing on Joyce\u2019s psyche and public image, it does open up the possibility of one of the traditional intentions of polygamy: the safeguarding of children\u2019s well-being.<\/p>\n
Read: Netflix turns to telecoms tie-ups in challenging African markets<\/p>\n
3. The trap of being \u2018civilised\u2019<\/p>\n
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Thirdly, the series shows how Jonasi\u2019s hiding of the truth as a way of life could be read as a personal struggle with what South African sociologist Mosa Phadi calls \u201cmultiple consciousness\u201d.<\/p>\n
The colonial project to \u2018civilise\u2019 Africans with western ideas of society has lingered. It demands that Jonasi stay monogamous, even if he\u2019s only pretending to. His civilised world knows him as the successful, university educated CEO with his perfect nuclear family.<\/p>\n
He and Joyce are the embodiment of what it means to be successful in democratic South Africa. Connections, sophistication, suburban life and power.<\/p>\n
Jonasi\u2019s story shows the struggles of navigating what Phadi calls \u201ccontradictory aspects of blackness\u201d. This trap of civilisation comes up several times in the series.<\/p>\n
Matipa\u2019s mom comments how un-Christian polygamy is. The double standard here is noted by Matipa, who calls her out on how culture and tradition is only brought up when it suits her.<\/p>\n
It is reflected by Jonasi when Joyce and Matipa confront him. He responds with, \u201cLet us talk like civilised people.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, as much as Jonasi wants this idea of \u2018civilised\u2019 success, he also wants to honour his customary commitments to Essie. He wants the Soweto life and nightlife but also a happy wife.<\/p>\n
He wants the respect of his children, yet he fails to set an example for them what that looks like. He wants the stability of a family but fails dismally to build it. As a result, Jonasi is not fully at home anywhere.<\/p>\n
Read: Netflix sees Africa spy drama as key to unlock continent growth<\/p>\n
The series presents us with these important contradictions. The theory of multiple consciousness begins to offer answers. His struggles with a fragmented identity ultimately unravels his success. His money can no longer solve his problems.<\/p>\n
The series does a good job of showing how social structure shaped him \u2013 his early poverty, his challenges with being nurtured, his father\u2019s drinking, his mother\u2019s absence. What it doesn\u2019t show us is his agency.<\/p>\n
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Nowhere in the series do we see him reflect on or regret his choices. Life was not just happening to him, he was making it happen.<\/p>\n
4. Money complicates things<\/p>\n
Finally, the series shows us how money (in a capitalist society) complicates relationships. Research on money and social relationships shows us that how we use it and whom we spend it on reinforces and conceals what we value as well as the power dynamics in these relations.<\/p>\n
Money gives Jonasi the ability to wield power to gain status and success. But he is unravelled when it is no longer able to mask his pain, his inability to confront the truths of his history, his failures as a husband and father, his feelings of worthlessness.<\/p>\n
This unmasking undoes the fa\u00e7ade of his power. When his money stops controlling others, he turns to inherited violences of the past, still present in contemporary intimate relationships.<\/p>\n
The wretchedness that it is to be Black in a system where violence and self-hate is real unravels him in the end. Ultimately he risks alienating his children, which may start them on a similar path of pain, violence, secrecy and shame, continuing the cycle.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the complexity in this story that resonates so powerfully with African Netflix viewers. They\u2019re what kept me on the couch, gripped, for the whole of its launch weekend, bingeing until it was finished.<\/p>\n
Grace Khunou, executive director of the Department of Leadership and Transformation, University of South Africa<\/p>\n
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.<\/p>\n
#Power #pleasure #patriarchy #Polygamist #Netflix #captivatingviewers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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