“The Polygamist”: The Pendulum of Choice

Growing up, hearing elders say it’s impossible to be a man without vices: smoking, drinking, and womanizing, is as regular as the day breaking. From viewing centres, fields, films, songs, public spaces, gatherings, and schools, the truism of that statement follows you like an unrepentant mosquito follows the ear. The popularity of owning a vice, as a man, monopolized mencentric conversations that, growing up, you start believing or disbelieving it, however fragmentarily. These vice-filled men aren’t scarce: they’re your fathers, teachers, religious leaders, uncles, neighbors, and familiar strangers. 

By watching them, you learn a thing or two about being or not being a man. This is the dilemma of Menzi (Wonder Ndlovu) in the Stained Glass Productions’ The Polygamist, currently showing on Netflix. Jonasi (S’Dumo Mtshali), his successful philandering father, is an embodiment of vice and toxic masculinity personified. As he watches his father morph from being a truthful to a conniving husband and father, the pendulum of accepting or rejecting his father’s toxic image keeps swinging in his consciousness. 

Directed by a trio of filmmakers: Akin Omotoso, Rolie Nikiwe, and Nthabi Tau, the 22-episode South African supernovela drama series is an adaptation of Sue Nyathi’s acclaimed novel, The Polygamist. The show explores themes of power, ownership, and the chaotic fallout of infidelity within a high-society family. Jonasi Gomora is the referential image of success: a thriving company, a poverty-repelling bank account, and seemingly united family courtesy of his endless sexual rendezvous.  

Joyce (Gugu Gumede), his devoted and nurturing wife of over two decades, wears the draining image of a perfect traditional wife who waits and hopes her husband looks at her again with love and compassion. But what the drama reveals is that loyalty to an uncaring and scheming man is an invitation to social and moral death. This death is felt more closely by her children: Mpume (Noluthando Shabalala) and Menzi. 

There are three men in Menzi’s life: his father, Jonasi, and two uncles: Magesh (Lwazie Keith Tsebesha) and Freedom (Vuyo Biyela). From these men, he gets introduced early to the insidious tentacles of exploitative masculinity. Like every other African boy, he’s groomed to live by performance, to earn his humanity by proving his worth. The dynamic system of patriarchal violence keeps coming to fore. Magesh, his father’s elder brother, besides being an enabler of Jonasi’s vices, believes strongly in keeping the family together, unmindful of how toxic it becomes. 

Freedom’s instinct-driven actions meant he cares less about introspection, the future, and life. He’s free, but his daily life shows how imprisoned he is. It’s from him that growing Menzi learns the rhythm of talking to a girl and willfully abusing them without remorse. In the series, manhood and masculinity are defined by wealth, power, dominance, and sex — all of which exist on the same line. Jonasi compels his wives and mistresses to obey. Magesh and Freedom carry the idea of masculine dominance. For Menzi, he has to constantly negotiate between embodying these men’s choices or fashioning a new one. Tragically, there aren’t any other men in his life. All through the series, he’s constantly having to toe the line between being questioning and accepting.

Growing up isn’t merely the biological business of growing bones and stepping into and out of puberty, it’s an unfinishable project of becoming, questioning, conforming, and accepting. It’s an endless evolutionary journey towards knowing ourselves, outgrowing or conforming. It could be argued that a measure of maturity may be the confidence to accept our former selves and take tender responsibility for missteps and confusions, refusing denial, refusing despair. This compassion is important for self-realization and maturity. 

This business of growing and tender acceptance of past misdeeds isn’t often afforded to the growing African boy. From childhood, he’s been thrown into a vicious theatre of performance and violence by male figures in his life. Ditto Menzi, our image of masculine innocence. And this is the paradox, Menzi and others like him must live: that we are finite but unfinished, and that maturity is not the prelude to mortality but the discovery of the immortal in us. Thus, when the pendulum of choices moves towards him, as a growing man, either to become his father’s incarnate or to unleash pent up anger, he has a choice to make. To be or not to be, that’s the question.