The Future of Television in the Global

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The Future of
Television in the
Global South
Reflections from Selected Countries

Edited by
George Ogola
The Future of Television in the Global South
 George Ogola
Editor

The Future of
Television in the
Global South
Reflections from Selected Countries
Editor
George Ogola
Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-18832-9    ISBN 978-3-031-18833-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18833-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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 Contents

1 Introduction  1
George Ogola

Part I The Changing Television Market   9

2 Original
 Local Productions, Streaming Services and the
Future of Subscription TV in South Africa 11
Alexia Smit

3 Saudi
 Arabian Television: The Challenge of Connecting
with Reality 29
Naomi Sakr

4 Surviving
 Digital Disruptions: The Future of Television
in Kenya 49
Nancy Kacungira and Mike Owuor

5 Television’s
 Uncertain and Fragmented Future: Battling
the Digital Revolution in Uganda 71
Ivan Okuda

v
vi Contents

Part II The ‘New Scramble’ for Africa  87

6 The
 BBC in Africa: Western Influencer, Soft Power
Purveyor, or African Broadcaster? 89
Peter Burdin

7 China
 Global Television Network’s Debate Show, ‘Talk
Africa’: Conflict, Economics, and Geopolitics107
Bob Wekesa

Part III Television Policy and Regulation in the Digital Age 129

8 The
 Past and Future of Media Giants in Latin America:
The Legacy of Clientelism in Brazil’s Broadcast Television
Development131
Elizabeth A. Stein and Karine Belarmino

9 Off
 the Map: Mexican TV Navigates a Post-­national,
Post-broadcast World169
Vinicio Sinta

10 The
 Politics of Broadcasting Regulation in Uganda193
Adolf E. Mbaine

11 When
 Stakeholder Interests Truncate Policy Intentions:
The Case of Digital Television Migration in Nigeria213
Akin Akingbulu

Index229
 Notes on Contributors

Akin Akingbulu is an expert in media and communication development.

He is the Executive Director of the Institute for Media and Society (IMS),
a media/communication support non-governmental organization based
in Lagos, Nigeria. He also works as a consultant in media/communication
policy, political communication as well as capacity building for civil society
and government institutions. He has consulted for the Government of
Nigeria and international institutions at home and abroad. Akin has been
the Coordinator of the Initiative on Building Community Radio in Nigeria
and the Nigeria Community Radio Coalition since 2003. He was a mem-
ber of the Working Group appointed by the Government of Nigeria to
draft a Community Broadcasting Policy for the country in 2006. He has
conducted research and published on issues in the media and communica-
tion sector. Akin previously worked in the education and youth develop-
ment institutions of the public sector; in the media with Independent
Communications Network, publishers of The News, and PM News titles,
and the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC), Lagos. He holds a PhD in
Communication from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Karine Belarmino is a Political Science PhD student at the University of
Minnesota. She holds a master’s in Political Science from the Social and
Political Studies Institute (IESP-UERJ), Brazil. Her research focuses on
media, clientelism, and corruption. She has published op-eds on
Agenda Pública and Open Global Rights, and collaborated with Intervozes
for the Brazilian Media.

vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Peter Burdin is the BBC’s former Africa Bureau Chief and brings more
than 30 years’ experience as a senior editorial leader in the BBC’s interna-
tional news operations. He now mentors and trains young journalists
through his own Nairobi-based media company PBA Media Ltd.
Peter is an Ambassador for the Tutu Foundation UK, he’s on the
Board of the African Leadership University, the South Africa-UK
Trust, and is Chair of Trustees for Humanity & Inclusion UK. His
expertise includes investments, economic empowerment, education, jour-
nalism and media and crisis management. He’s Senior Advisor to Siyakha
Africa, the financial services company that brings together international
investors and African SMEs and entrepreneurs. He also advises the Policy
Centre for African People and the Agricultural Growth Network.In 2017
Peter co-founded Education Sub Saharan Africa, or ESSA, which seeks to
transform education outcomes across the continent. He’s moderated con-
ferences at Oxford and Cambridge University Africa Societies, and worked
with the University of Central Lancashire on developing partnerships with
African universities.
Nancy Kacungira is a multi-award-winning Ugandan journalist champi-
oning diversity, balance and nuance in narratives about the global south.
Now based in London, she anchors BBC World News bulletins and pres-
ents the weekly programme ‘In Business Africa’, having previously worked
in Kampala and Nairobi. She holds a Master’s degree in International
Communications from the University of Leeds. Her impactful docu-
mentaries and TEDx talk on African narratives saw her named as one
of Africa’s 100 most influential young people in 2019, and again in
2020. Nancy has worked in media since 2003, holding various roles
including radio presenter, TV anchor, business correspondent and
social media editor. Nancy is also a digital media pioneer; 10 years
ago, she co-founded Blu Flamingo—an online media management
company—that has now expanded operations to five African coun-
tries. As a moderator Nancy has hosted on some of the world’s biggest
platforms including the World Economic Forum, IMF/World Bank
Meetings and Uganda’s first ever Presidential Debate.
Adolf E. Mbaine completed a DLitt et Phil in Journalism at the
University of Johannesburg in 2019. His thesis focused on media policy
and regulation. He also holds an MA in Journalism and Media Studies
from Rhodes University. He is a media and communication trainer and
consultant in Uganda, and teaches (mainly) print journalism plus
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix

media policy and regulation at the Department of Journalism and

Communication, Makerere University. He was a Member of the
Ministerial Commission for the reform and restructuring of the
Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) from August to December,
2016, among other key tasks. He is currently a NORHED Post-­
doctoral Fellow researching on “The Obstacles to building sustain-
able self-­
regulatory systems for journalistic accountability to society:
A comparative study of Uganda and Tanzania.”
George Ogola works at the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual
Studies, University of Nottingham. He holds a PhD and an MA in
Journalism and Media Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand,
South Africa, and a BEd in English Literature and Linguistics from the
University of Nairobi. Ogola has published widely on the interface
between journalism, techno/politics and popular culture. Of particular
interest in his work is the impact of emerging technologies on political and
media practices in newsrooms in the global South. He is the author of
Popular Media in Kenya’s History: Fiction and Newspapers as Socio-Political
Actors (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and co-editor The Future of
Quality Journalism: A cross-continental analysis (London and New York:
Routledge, 2014). He is a member of the AHRC’s Peer Review College
and convenor of the Africa Media Salon.
Ivan Okuda is a lawyer and journalist in Uganda. He is the Managing
Editor of www.voxpopuli.ug, a non-profit online publication of the East
African Center for Investigative Reporting, and previously wrote for
the Daily Monitor newspaper. In 2019 he was a Konrad Adenauer
Stiftung (KAS) Media Africa Scholar at the University of the
Witwatersrand in South Africa where he attained an MA in Journalism
and Media Studies. He holds a Bachelor of Laws from Makerere
University and Post-Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the Law
Development Center, Uganda.
Mike Owuor is the Editor of the Sunday Nation, one of the highest cir-
culating newspapers in Africa, published in print and online by the Nairobi-­
based regional giant, Nation Media Group. Mike has more than
15 years multimedia newsroom experience working in various senior edi-
torial roles at the Nation Media Group and the Standard Group, Kenya’s
top two media organisations. He also has interest in media research and in
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

2017 co-authored a book chapter, “Citizen journalism in Kenya as a con-

tested third space”, in Perspectives on Participatory Politics and Citizen
Journalism in a Networked Africa (edited by Bruce Mutsvairo, Palgrave
Macmillan). Mike is a member of the Kenya Editors Guild and the East
African Editors Forum and has been involved in many media research
projects by the two organisations. He holds a Master of Arts degree in
International Journalism from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom,
and Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education qualifications in
Adaptive Leadership.
Naomi Sakr is Professor of Media Policy and a former Director of the
CAMRI Arab Media Centre. She was previously a journalist, editor and
country analyst. She worked at the Economist Intelligence Unit (1985–97)
as a Middle East specialist and managing editor of political risk and eco-
nomic forecast reports. She has an MA from the School of Oriental and
African Studies (1974) and another from the Institute of Education
(1994), University of London. She left the EIU to research Arab media
for a PhD (awarded by the University of Westminster in 1999) and worked
as a consultant to international organisations, including Article 19,
Amnesty International and the United Nations Development Programme.
She has published extensively on the media in the Middle East. Some of
her work include Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization
and the Middle East, which won the British Middle Eastern Studies Book
Prize in 2003, Arab Television Today, published in 2007, and
Transformations in Egyptian Journalism, published 2013. She has edited
two collections: Women and Media in the Middle East, Power through Self-­
Expression (2004) and Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community,
Legitimacy and Public Life (2007) and co-edited a third, Arab Media
Moguls (2015). Her work on media policy, journalism and cultural pro-
duction in the Arab world has also been published in numerous refereed
journals and edited books.
In addition to her consulting work for the international organisations
mentioned above, Naomi has been commissioned to write background
papers on aspects of Arab media for UNESCO, the Arab Knowledge
Report, the European Parliament, the UK House of Lords, British Council
and Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for Intercultural
Dialogue. She has mentored academics in Egypt and Tunisia on behalf of
Media Diversity Institute and is frequently invited to speak at over-
seas events.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

Vinicio Sinta is Assistant Professor in Broadcast Communication at The

University of Texas at Arlington. He previously taught at Texas A&M
University-San Antonio in the department of Communication, History &
Philosophy.
Alexia Smit is a senior lecturer in Film and Television studies at the
Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town in
South Africa. She holds a PhD in Television studies from the University of
Glasgow. Her research focusses on popular entertainment television,
with a particular interest in South African reality television, gender,
class, postfeminism, transnational African TV, and women’s televi-
sion genres in Africa.
Elizabeth A. Stein is currently an assistant professor at Wesleyan
University, Middleton, CT, USA. She studies media and collective action,
authoritarian regimes and democratic accountability with a regional focus
on Latin America. Her work has appeared in publications such as
International Journal of Press/Politics, Political Communication,
Comparative Political Studies, and the Washington Post’s Monkey
Cage blog.
Bob Wekesa is Acting Director, African Centre for the Study of the
United States (ACSUS), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
South Africa. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nairobi
and master’s and doctoral degrees from the Communication
University of China. His background is in journalism. His area of
research is the intersection of media and communications on the one
hand and geopolitics, diplomacy and foreign policy on the other. His
current research work includes: Africa-US public diplomacy (includ-
ing diaspora relations); cities as actors in international relations; Africa-US
digital diplomacy and the representation of Africa in American media and
America in African media. He is also working on the trilateral Africa-US-
China engagements.
 List of Figures

Fig. 8.1 The States of the North and Northeast Regions of Brazil in
Which Politicians Who Own the Media are Prevalent 142
Fig. 8.2 Rede Globo Affiliates 147
Fig. 8.3 Percent of Population Using the Internet, Brazil in
Comparative Perspective, 1993–2018 148
Fig. 8.4 Broadband Subscriptions per 100 People, Brazil in
Comparative Perspective, 2000–2018 149

xiii
 List of Tables

Table 8.1 Timeline of Brazilian legislation creating and reforming

Brazil’s regulatory structure for television 151
Table 8.2 Media groups with Globo affiliate stations 156
Table 9.1 Key performance indicators, Grupo Televisa (Millions of
Mexican Pesos) 176
Table 9.2 Key financial information, Televisión Azteca (Millions of
U.S. Dollars)177
Table 9.3 Grupo Televisa business segments, 2012–2020 comparison 182
Table 9.4 Televisión Azteca business segments, 2012–2020 comparison 183

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

George Ogola

The changing information ecologies brought forth by technological

developments and disruptions, most notably the proliferation of digital
media and its various affordances have attracted significant scholarly atten-
tion on the future of legacy media. The changing journalistic practices, the
de-centering of the traditional newsroom, the fragmentation of media
audiences and their increasing role in the (co-)creation of media outputs
and distribution, the collapse of traditional business models for media
organisations, among other developments have been the subject of a large
body of research. However, scholarly work on these developments and
particularly on the precarity of the futures of most legacy media have
mostly focused on the print media sector. This is particularly so within the
context of the global South. Less visible yet equally impacted by these
developments has been the broadcast media, more specifically television,
now also facing variegated futures.
Guillermo Orozco and Toby Miller once remarked that in Latin
America, television “is Everywhere: Not Dead, Not Dying, But Converging
and Thriving” (2016, 99). Whether that is the case or not today is partly

G. Ogola (*)
Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies,
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
e-mail: george.ogola@nottingham.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
G. Ogola (ed.), The Future of Television in the Global South,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18833-6_1
2 G. OGOLA

the subject of this book. There is still very little substantive research focus-
ing particularly on television in this broader conversation about the future
of the media in the global South. This is despite the significant role televi-
sion continues to play in the everyday cultural and political life in the
global South. As Orozco and Miller observed of Latin America, “govern-
ments still use television to promote generalized propaganda, as well as
their daily agendas, football on screen remains wildly popular, and fiction
programmes, most notably telenovelas, dominate prime time… television
remains the principal cultural game in town” (2016, 99). The case may
not be the same everywhere, for across many countries, television, like
print, has haemorrhaged audiences and is effectively now just one of the
many ‘cultural games’ in town. However, in many countries in the global
South, television remains one of the most trusted media, particularly in
times of crisis, when as the Reuters Digital News Report 2021 indicates,
audiences seem to place “a greater premium on accurate and reliable news
sources” (Newman et al., 2021, 9). Indeed, even in global North con-
texts, in the case of the UK for example, television stations such as the
BBC and Sky News were found to be the most trusted media brands dur-
ing the Covid-19 pandemic (Bold, 2020). A survey by Havas further
found that ‘mainstream media’ was also losing its pejorative connotations
(Ibid.) In Africa, India, and Latin America, television continues to hold
immense political agency. This is partly reflected in its notable strict con-
trol and policing through various means, including legislation and owner-
ship, both directly and indirectly by several governments (Ogola, 2011).
As is discussed in this volume by Vinicio Sinta and Elizabeth Stein, in the
cases of Mexico and Brazil respectively, television ownership continues to
attract significant attention from the state and political players more gen-
erally, all seeking some form of control of the sector. In both countries,
television continues to play a key role in electoral politics and in the ‘hus-
bandry’ of power. Those who seek political power are interested in con-
trolling television and those in power use television to consolidate and
protect their political and economic power.
Even where the popularity of television (not to be confused with sig-
nificance) is declining, there is little research on why and how this is the
case. Often television is lumped with other media and its perceived decline
explained on, for example, the challenges facing the print media. Suffice to
mention that, first, the television experience is unique and the growth or
decline of television as a platform is a function of both its shared charac-
teristics with other media but also its distinctiveness. Second, scholarly
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

interest in the future of print media has been precisely because of its
decline rather than its growth. This book thus gives critical attention to
television as similar but also different to other media, reflecting on its
growth, decline, and prospects, while paying particular attention to the
context within which it operates in the various selected countries.
Scholarly attention on television in the global South has largely been
focused on studying television formats (cf. Mueni, 2014; Ndlela, 2013),
and representational and identity politics (cf. Motsaathebe, 2009; Porto,
2011) with broader structural issues covered almost entirely by industry
reports. These remain the key reference materials for research in this field
in the region. The exception has been the political role of television in
crisis moments particularly in North Africa during the Arab Spring (cf.
Lynch, 2015; Robertson, 2013) and Latin America, but these are hardly
illustrative of broader television trends. There is some emerging interest
on the future of television in the digital age as can be seen in the work of
Motsaathebe and Chiumbu (2021) but even in this particular volume, an
outlier in many respects, the focus is entirely on Africa and with a concen-
trated focus on Southern Africa. Overall, major gaps remain in terms of
understanding how television in the global South is evolving and adapting
within the context of the significant technological shifts, developments
and raptures taking place in the broader media industry and what this
means for its future(s). The chapter contributions in this volume address
some of these gaps and attempt to anticipate the future of television in the
region. This is not done in the sense of predicting what this future will
look like, but rather providing some leads and clarity on what these futures
may look like and anticipated areas of scholarly interest. This volume finds
intellectual incentive in this urgent need to anticipate hence its particular
focus on what current developments mean for television in the future.
This kind of approach forces us to do much more than simply document
the history of television. It forces us to ask new questions and to identify
emerging patterns and relationships that draw on much more than the
usual political economy approaches to such studies. Importantly too, we
do not reduce the conversation to one that focuses entirely on technology
but also look at the broader cultural, economic, regulatory, and policy
infrastructure which remain central to determining the future of this sec-
tor. The aim then is to be usefully provocative, to start an important con-
versation on the prospects and future of television in the global South.
Taking television in the global South as an important cultural and polit-
ical barometer, space and force simultaneously constitutive and reflective
4 G. OGOLA

of the Southern cultural and political experiences, and shaped by l­ocal/

national, continental, transcontinental, and technological flows, the book
explores how television as a platform and sector in the global South is
adapting to the rampant technological changes and processes of globaliza-
tion and of globalized narratives and technologies. The chapters particu-
larly examine how television is ‘future-proofing’ its continued relevance
and viability, commercially, socially and politically in this constantly chang-
ing information ecosystem. The chapter contributions in the book are
drawn from selected countries in regions of notable intellectual neglect in
this area: East, South and West Africa, Latin America, and the Middle
East. The countries we focus on are purposively selected primarily because
of their illustrative potential of the key issues addressed in the book. At
best a study of this kind can only focus on indicative case studies but they
still have the capacity to provide us a panoply of the range of challenges
facing television in the global South and the responses to these—techno-
logical, professional, policy related and regulatory. Collectively, they suf-
ficiently provide us with a strong enough context that can help us
understand the prospects for television in the global South.
The book draws on a wealth of expertise from journalism, media, cul-
tural and political studies scholars, media practitioners and policymakers.
This is a deliberate approach driven in part by the recognition of the need
to bridge the gap between university-based research and industry and to
reflect on the latter from within.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I broadly looks at the chang-
ing television market in the global South using case studies from South
Africa, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Uganda. Alexia Smit (Chap. 2) focuses
on the impact of streaming services in South Africa and how these are
reconfiguring the television sector in the country. She particularly looks at
the cut-throat competition between digital streaming services Showmax
and Netflix both leveraging on their various strengths, one utilizing its
international profile and footprint and the other its local knowledge and
networks in the television sector in the country. She argues that both com-
panies are investing heavily in locally relevant programming to serve a
market whose taste is simultaneously local as it is international. It is a
market that is so complex that the notion of the ‘local’ has been reimag-
ined by the broadcasters. Meanwhile, the legacies of apartheid endure in
South Africa’s media landscape, often in tension with the emergent post-
apartheid political dispensation. The struggle between this historical past
and the fragile present is reflected in the various compromises that are now
reflected in South Africa’s TV market.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

Naomi Sakr’s chapter (Chap. 3) offers a comprehensive discussion of

Saudi Arabian television, drawing on her extensive work on television in
the Arab world. In particular, she looks at what she calls a ‘new’ approach
to screen production in Saudi Arabia and how non-Saudi companies and
individuals are developing a ‘Saudi-based entertainment industry of inter-
national stature’ and how this sits with a political environment that tradi-
tionally seeks direct control over media content. She asks whether this new
approach will ‘generate vibrancy and innovation’ in the television sector in
the country.
Mike Owuor and Nancy Kacingira’s chapter (Chap. 4) examines how
Kenya’s TV industry is trying to adapt to the shifting demands of its audi-
ences and competition from streaming services among other new players
by investing in new ways of delivering content. To do so, they are having
to move away from traditional path dependencies, thus also experimenting
with new business models to create alternative income streams for the
industry as the traditional advertising market shrinks.
Across the border in Uganda, Ivan Okuda (Chap. 5) explores similar
challenges facing the TV industry in Uganda. He reflects on the fragment-
ing television landscape in the country. He argues that the future of the
industry in the country will be influenced not only by technology but by
broader structural factors, most fundamentally Uganda’s socio-economic
situation. Technological appropriations for content production, distribu-
tion and monetization will largely depend on the economic situation of
the ordinary Ugandan. Without disposable income, for example, many
Ugandans will not be able to own a television set much less discriminate
what or how to engage with television content. Okuda further argues that
TV players in the country will need to develop innovative business models
that take into account Uganda’s complex class structures and audiences’
media consumption habits, often a function of various variables.
Part II of the book looks at the place of international TV broadcasters
in Africa. Peter Burdin’s chapter (Chap. 6) offers an interesting first-­
person account of his experiences as a former Head of BBC Africa and the
organisation’s evolution into what he calls an ‘African broadcaster’
through its ‘Agenda 2020’ project which has seen the organisation expand
massively in the continent. He examines the BBC’s emergent ‘editorial
agenda’ for Africa as well as the tensions between the organisation’s
attempt to create a new African narrative developed from within the con-
tinent with its silent role as a soft power purveyor of UK interests. The
future of the BBC in Africa he argues will also be determined by its
6 G. OGOLA

funding model, which is currently under threat from the Conservative

government.
Bob Wekesa’s chapter (Chap. 7) continues this discussion on the new
‘scramble of Africa’ by focusing on the China Global Television Network
(CGTN) which was launched in Africa as China Central Television Africa
(CCTV Africa) in January 2012. Through an examination of one of the
organisation’s flagship shows, Africa Talk, he looks at whether CGTN
achieved its stated objectives—serving as a voice for Africa—and implicit
goals—countering ostensibly negative Western coverage of China in Africa.
Part III of the book focuses on television policy and regulation in the
digital age. Elizabeth Stein and Karine Belarmino’s chapter (Chap. 8)
offers a detailed engagement with the oligopolistic nature of media own-
ership in Brazil, how this has historically influenced the country’s political
systems, and how media owners are adapting to this new regime of tech-
nologies, policies, and legislation that threaten their dominance. They
argue that the culture of clientelism that characterises the media landscape
in Brazil is so entrenched and unlikely to be threatened by the emergent
tech-dominant media ecosystem or Brazil’s policy and legal responses ini-
tiated so far.
Vinicio Sinta’s chapter (Chap. 9) looks at the changing media land-
scape in Mexico, long dominated by Televisa and TV Azteca. In the con-
text of a fragmenting audience, a shrinking advertising base, and pressure
from global Video-on-Demand giants, the chapter reflects on how the
two conglomerates are adapting to the emerging threats to their domi-
nance and what this means for their future and that of the TV sector
in Mexico.
In Uganda, Adolf Mbaine’s chapter (Chap. 10) examines television
regulation, looking at key regulatory actors such as the Uganda
Communications Commission (UCC), the role of the government and
how regulation can stifle the growth of the sector even within the context
of a liberalised media environment. He argues that whilst the constitution
provides for an independent regulatory body the UCC, television regula-
tion in the country remains largely in the hands of the state, in turn under-
mining both the expansion of the sector and its capacity to adapt to the
various changes taking place in the broader media ecosystem.
In the last chapter, Akin Akinbulu (Chap. 11) examines how stake-
holder interests, principally the state, have undermined digital television
migration in Nigeria. Contestations over stakeholder interests have led to
a flawed policymaking process ultimately affecting the implementation of
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

the digital television migration in Nigeria. He argues that the failures of

this transition and the policy and regulatory flaws it has exposed in the
Nigerian broadcast sector will have implications for the country’s televi-
sion future.

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 PART I

The Changing Television Market

 CHAPTER 2

Original Local Productions, Streaming

Services and the Future of Subscription TV
in South Africa

Alexia Smit

Introduction
Local entertainment is overwhelmingly the most popular content for
South African audiences. According to research by futurefact, 86% of adult
South Africans “like to watch TV programmes where our social and cul-
tural issues are part of the story” (Reid, 2020) The top five highest rated
programmes on terrestrial tv in the last quarter of 2019 were all local
television dramas (Reid, 2020). Similarly in the same period on pay TV
the top performers told local stories (Reid, 2020). It thus stands to reason
that pay TV services have invested considerable funding in local program-
ming. Multichoice (parent company of the streaming service, Showmax)
reports that it has devoted 40% of its acquisition budget on local enter-
tainment excluding sport (Multichoice, 2021). Netflix has reportedly
invested R800 million into South African programming (Businesstech,

A. Smit (*)
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
e-mail: alexia.smit@uct.ac.za

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 11

Switzerland AG 2023
G. Ogola (ed.), The Future of Television in the Global South,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18833-6_2
12 A. SMIT

2021). For over-the-top (OTT) subscription providers entering the South

African market, market penetration in the country will depend, to a large
extent on capacity to local content provision.
South Africa’s policy and legislative environment is also set up strongly
in favour of local productions. In November 2020, the government
announced plans to increase quotas on local content for commercial ser-
vice providers in South Africa and indicated plans to extend these require-
ments to OTT streaming services as well as plans to charge licence fees to
OTT services (Department of Communications, 2020). While the matter
of regulating streaming services is likely to be contested for some time it
remains clear that local content provision is of key importance for consid-
ering the future of video entertainment in South Africa. However, given
the complexity of the post-apartheid social space and the global networks
within which local media is entrenched, it is important to examine what is
really meant by “local content”, especially when it comes to OTT stream-
ing services with large international audiences. By considering how
Showmax and Netflix are interpreting and commissioning local content,
this chapter considers the future of streaming in South Africa, and the
implications for South Africa’s entertainment future.

OTT Streaming in South Africa

Ruth Teer-Tomaselli (2019, 466) notes that despite a wide array of view-
ing choices 56% of South African homes still rely on free-to-air analogue
broadcast TV. Furthermore, 41% of South African households subscribe
to one of the DSTV satellite TV subscription plans. At the time of Teer-­
Tomaselli’s writing only 4% of South Africans watch via OTT video
streaming (2019, 466). South African Communications Authority
(ICASA) cite expensive broadband, slow internet speeds and low device
ownership (ICASA, 2019) as reasons for the “muted” impact of OTT
streaming services that they identify in the South African market. There
has, however, been a significant recent improvement in broadband afford-
ability and speeds, leading to the entry of many new local and interna-
tional streaming services into the South African market. This trajectory of
lower data costs and better speed is likely to continue, and thus increases
the future viability of OTT streaming services (Tengeh and Udoakpan,
2021, 2–3).
The incursion of OTT subscription services into the South African mar-
ket has raised concerns amongst regulators as well as for the local pay
 2 ORIGINAL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS, STREAMING SERVICES… 13

television service providers (Department of Communications, 2020;

Multichoice, 2021). Colin Chambwera (2021, 40) argues that global
streaming services such as Netflix currently do not pose a competitive
threat to free-to-air broadcast TV but rather competes with Multichoice,
the satellite channel which has long dominated the South African pay TV
space. And indeed my survey of the original productions on South African
streaming TV will reveal that local programming made for streaming TV
in South Africa addresses niche audiences and viewers in the middle to
upper middle class bracket rather than mass audiences.
Showmax, a South African OTT streaming service attached to pay TV
company Multichoice launched in 2015, a few months before global
streaming service Netflix launched in the country in January 2016.
Multichoice has explicitly positioned Showmax as the satellite providers’
attempt to retain viewers in response to an anticipated influx of global
OTT streaming offerings (Multichoice, 2018). Showmax was offered to
consumers for a basic subscription fee but was also packaged with DSTVs
satellite subscriptions. So that, for example, a premium satellite subscriber
may access Showmax as part of their satellite television service. As of
January 2021 Multichoice has 8.7 million customers in South Africa
(Gavaza, 2021). This number refers to their entire subscriber numbers
across satellite and streaming rather than simply its streaming numbers.
DSTVs satellite services are more costly than streaming entertainment and
come with the cost of installing a satellite dish and purchasing a decoder.
Via Showmax, Multichoice can offer its content to subscribers without the
barriers associated with satellite subscriptions. While DSTV already oper-
ates satellite TV services in many countries on the African continent,
Showmax signals an expansion of the company’s global footprint as they
now offer Showmax services in 70 countries.
Netflix launched in South Africa as part of a large scale global expansion
of their services across multiple countries in January 2016. Netflix has fol-
lowed an aggressive programme of international expansion and is the most
established streaming video platform in terms of its international penetra-
tion. But the platform has not dominated global markets uniformly and
the success of Netflix varies from country to country (Lobato, 2018, 44).
Netflix does not share data about its viewership but Businesslive.SA esti-
mates that Netflix South African customer numbers are between 300,000
and 400,000. This number was based upon the user share Multichoice has
estimated in its presentations to South Africa’s communications regulator,
ICASA (Gavaza, 2021).
14 A. SMIT

Both Netflix and Showmax have made attempts to grow their market
share in the mobile phone streaming space, each offering inexpensive
mobile subscriptions: Netflix mobile plan is available at R49 per month in
South Africa (in comparison to R99 for the full basic service) and US
3.99 in other African countries. Similarly, Showmax offers a mobile
streaming subscription for R39.99 in South Africa.
Showmax and Netflix share the OTT subscription space with an increas-
ing number of streaming services. The market is thus currently comprised
of both local services such as Vodacom Video Play (Launched 2015),
TelkomOne (Launched 2020), and e-video-on-demand (Launched
2021), and international companies such as Amazon PrimeVideo
(Launched 2016), Acorn TV (Launched 2018), Apple TV+ (Launched
2019), Youtube Premium (Launched 2019), Britbox (Launched 2021).
Disney+ is about to make its entry in South Africa, with plans to launch in
June 2022 (News24, August 2021). The national broadcaster plans to
launch an SABC streaming platform by March 2022 (News24, 2021)
Other international streaming services such as HBO Max, Hulu,
Paramount+ and Discovery+ have not yet launched in South Africa but
the future may see more of these services entering the market. I focus this
discussion on Showmax and Netflix, two providers of subscription stream-
ing entertainment which have been in the market for a comparatively long
time and which are currently making original local content in South Africa.
By examining their strategies we may get an indication of how other mar-
ket players will address South African audiences.

South African Broadcasting

As I have mentioned, South African audiences still overwhelmingly rely on
analogue television. The free-to-air South Africa broadcasting environ-
ment is primarily the terrain of the South African National Broadcaster
(SABC) which operates three channels along with South Africa’s free-to-­
air commercial broadcast TV channel e-TV. South African terrestrial TV
has been due to transition to digital since plans were initiated in 2006 but
the process has been delayed by disputes and court battles (Teer-Tomaselli,
2019). The migration has still yet to occur.
While local productions are popular in South Africa, the national broad-
caster has had difficulty funding these productions. For many years the
SABC has been beset by financial, management and operational issues
caused by corruption and political interference (Teer-Tomaselli, 2019).
 2 ORIGINAL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS, STREAMING SERVICES… 15

The SABC has received several bailouts from the government but has still
found itself having to enact retrenchments and cancel popular pro-
grammes. The broadcaster is currently in a process of restructuring and
rebuilding but much needs to be done to bring the SABC into phase of
stability and consistent public service provision (Nevill, 2020).
Due to the legacy of apartheid the South African video entertainment
market is highly segmented in terms of both class and race. The apartheid
government was slow to introduce television and when they did in 1976
the service was initially dedicated to the interests of white South Africans.
In the 1980s two channels were added to cater to black audiences. The
broadcasting policy was underpinned by racist ideas about black audi-
ences. In the post-apartheid years the national broadcaster has been tasked
with communicating a message of national unity while also serving the
interests of South Africa’s diverse audiences. South African public televi-
sion is governed by a set of regulations set out by ICASA which require
public and commercial broadcasters to produce certain quotas of local
content, to feature local language content and which incentivises produc-
tion in regions of the country with low television representation.
Like that of broadcast TV, the history of Pay TV was also undergirded
by white dominance. Ruth Teer Tomaselli explains how the introduction
of pay TV service M-Net by Naspers in 1986 can be seen as a way of sus-
taining the power of the ideological power of the Afrikaans press in
response to competition from television broadcasting (2019, 460). M-Net
expanded into the satellite service DSTV in 1995 under the Naspers sub-
sidiary, Multichoice, becoming the dominant provider of pay television in
South Africa. In the post-apartheid era middle class Black South Africans
have been identified as the biggest and fastest-growing market for pay
video entertainment services (Multichoice, 2019). DSTV has launched a
range of channels Mzansi Magic bouquet, Vuzu) catering to local black
audiences and has also released a set of programming bouquets at price
points accessible to a segment of the black South African population. In
addition DSTV continues to serve Afrikaans viewers with dedicated chan-
nels. The broadcaster also offers premium international content and exclu-
sive sports access.
It is important to recount this history and context because it has a
meaningful impact on the strategies and rhetoric necessary for OTT ser-
vice to command the South African market. While Showmax, as a
Multichoice company may position itself as a homegrown local company,
it is worth noting that it inherits Multichoice’s history as a benefactor of
16 A. SMIT

the apartheid regime even though the company has been unbundled from
parent company, Naspers. That the market is divided along raced and class
lines means that different streaming services are likely to court niche seg-
ments of South Africa’s viewership. On the one hand gaining a large mar-
ket share in the country will mean catering to the needs of black South
Africans who are by far the majority. This means producing content in local
languages and telling stories relevant to black middle class South Africans.
Teer-Tomaselli points out given South Africa’s language demographics
programmers offering the most offerings of local languages, particularly
isiXhosa and IsiZulu, will likely have a “head start” in the pay broadcasting
space (2019, 466). However, on the other hand, significant wealth remains
in the hands of smaller groups, especially white South Africans. Given the
capacity of streaming services to court niche viewerships, another approach
for these services may be producing a selection of niche content which can
speak to multiple different language groups including smaller language
and identity groups. For example it is likely that a service like Britbox will
cater to the needs of English speaking mostly white South Africans with a
sense of cultural connection to Britain.
Another critical element of this context is the paucity of representation
of black South Africans and the historical neglect of this audience group.
Despite measures to address inequality there has been limited entry of
black South Africans into directorial and executive roles filmmaking indus-
try, particularly when it comes to black women (Mkosi, 2016; Vourlias,
2018). The more recent failings of the SABC have meant that black South
African audiences have been ill-served by the public broadcaster, even in
the post-apartheid era and industry workers have had to navigate a diffi-
cult broadcasting landscape. The entry of streaming services into the
South African space signals the potential for new ways of representing
South African life and new opportunities for South African film and TV
makers. Streaming platforms are particularly attractive for their ability to
expose local stories to global markets. But, as I will show commercial fac-
tors and broader global networks of OTT companies will determine to
what extent streaming services can actually make a meaningful contribu-
tion to the South African film and television industry.
 2 ORIGINAL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS, STREAMING SERVICES… 17

Regulatory Matters
The competition between Showmax (Multichoice) and Netflix has been
made particularly visible by regulatory disputes surrounding competition
in the subscription TV market. ICASA began an investigation in 2016
which sought to examine the pay TV industry and ensure fair competition
was enabled in line state provisions. While ICASA’s (2019) initial findings
indicate that Multichoice does not have sufficient competition within the
pay TV market and may be subject to remedies, the presentations made to
the committee by Multichoice circle around the competitive threat posed
by new OTT streaming services. Multichoice has made several rounds of
presentations to ICASA which stress the belief that OTT subscription ser-
vices present a significant competitive threat market Multichoice’s busi-
ness (ICASA, 2019; Multichoice, 2021).
There are two ways in which the concept of local content emerged in
this discussion. Firstly, Multichoice’s presentation makes a case for the
value of the company to South African consumers by stressing the com-
pany’s contribution to the production of local content. Multichoice
describes itself as “a local homegrown company” (Multichoice, 2021, 10).
The presentation highlights that the company has produced “3850 h local
content” and note that 40% of their expenditure goes to local program-
ming. Secondly they stress the contribution of multichoice to employment
and profit within the local TV industry. They thus pitch the appeal for
regulatory support as a battle between a homegrown local service provider
and a multinational company with the “local-ness” of Multichoice as a key
selling point. What multichoice downplays in this self-positioning as a
local company, is their vast multi-national footprint in Africa. Multichoice
may be a local company but it also a transnational operation with signifi-
cant sway in markets across Africa.
While this regulatory debate demonstrates Multichoice’s view of Netflix
as a competitive threat, the two companies have engaged in deals which
suggests the necessity of working with rivals as the landscape of pay TV in
South Africa changes. Multichoice has adapted by integrating its services
with its streaming competitors like Amazon Prime and Netflix. DSTV sub-
scribers can access these platforms via the DSTV decoder. This, they claim,
is to increase convenience for their customers but also as a measure against
losing customers entirely to other services (Multichoice, 2021, 33).
As in many national contexts into which Netflix had made its entry,
there is much confusion and contestation over how to regulate streaming
18 A. SMIT

service providers, particularly in comparison to the regulations on existing

local entertainment providers on traditional platforms. Netflix is currently
not subject to local programming quotas and TV licencing requirements
which apply to both traditional broadcast services and satellite services in
South Africa. In late 2020 the South African government announced plans
to extend licences to OTT streaming service and to apply local content
quotes to their catalogues in a graduated system and up to a maximum of
30% (Department of Communication, 2020). While Netflix has begun to
produce local content, this is not governed by the ICASA regulations
which pertain to broadcast and satellite television. The percentage of pro-
gramming spend quota would have a dramatic impact on Netflix’s com-
petitive edge: its abundant catalogue of programming from around the
world. While Netflix has made a small amount of local shows it is a tiny
fraction of the spending that Netflix makes on global programming.
Netflix spokesperson Shola Sanni responded by noting that quota on local
content spend would mean reducing the catalogue of international offer-
ings in a way which would not benefit South African consumers
(BusinessTech, 2021). Like Multichoice Netflix positions itself as a con-
tributor to the local industry in debates about regulation. Sanni stressed
the 800 million investment in local content and the 1800 jobs created
thus far by the company, suggesting that the government instead focus on
incentivising local content production (BusinessTech, 2021). Sanni also
highlighted the fact that international audiences for South African content
outstrip South African audiences, suggesting a different way of thinking
about who consumes local content.

“Local Content” and Streaming TV: Moving Targets

On a surface reading, “local content” might be read is any content made
in South Africa about South African concerns, people or characters. A
greater challenge is providing locally made content which is relevant to
South Africans and will bring viewers to platforms while helping providers
to navigate the regulatory environment and public impression of their
companies. Given the segmentation of audiences, understanding how and
why service providers within the South African market commission par-
ticular kinds of local content is key to understanding their future moves in
the space and for understanding how the local market concerns connect
with global networks of television. Discussions of the landscape need to
 2 ORIGINAL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS, STREAMING SERVICES… 19

include analysis of programme types, genres and address to audiences.

However, this task comes with considerable challenges.
One of the difficulties of studying OTT streaming services is the shift
from studying published TV schedules and ratings to engaging with video
content as a catalogue accessible through web interfaces. These interfaces
are not designed to be used by researchers and it can be impossible to tell
from these interfaces the full range of local programming which exists
within a company’s catalogue. These interfaces are subject to change and
can be difficult to search, especially in the case of Netflix which uses algo-
rithms to predict viewer preferences, thus making the interface different
for every user. Similarly, we cannot know what extent of Showmax’s hold-
ings of licenced local content is displayed on the interface. Rather than
attempting to provide a comprehensive overview of these extensive cata-
logues, I have chosen to highlight key trends in local programming on
both Netflix and Showmax, with a view to predicting the futures of local
content on each provider. I’ve been guided here by the amount of press
attention and promotion attached to specific shows and trends. Jason
Mittell explains that in the streaming age, where broadcasters are no lon-
ger invested in selling audiences to advertisers, brand recognition and
prestige is more important to subscription services that audience share or
ratings (Mittell, 2016). I thus focus this chapter on those shows which are
marketed as “original local content” in a bid to brand Netflix and
Showmax’s respective local offerings within the South African market.

Original Local Content on Netflix

When compared to Showmax, Netflix has the advantage of an enormous,
steady supply of premium global content. However, the press material sur-
rounding Netflix role in South Africa certainly celebrates the importance
of the local and also positions Netflix as a company adding value to the
local film market. Dorothy Ghettuba the head of African originals for
Netflix, hails African talent while positioning Netflix as an enabling force
for local creative industries noting:

We have come across great creatives and great producers who have, for the
longest while, been working with what they have, and now we give them the
opportunity with this platform and this backing from this company to really
do their best
Vourlias (2020)
20 A. SMIT

She also stresses that Netflix brings value to African creatives by connect-
ing them with enormous global markets, noting that Netflix gives creators
“access to 190 countries” (Vourlias, 2020). Netflix approach to local is
thus intimately bound with an address to global audiences.
Queen Sono (2020) was publicized as Netflix’s first original African
series. The South African series Shadow (2019) actually precedes Queen
Sono by a year, but from its marketing we can understand Queen Sono as an
important flagship show for Netflix African content. The show is based in
South Africa but was shot in several African locations including Tanzania,
Kenya and Nigeria and was thus described as a truly African production.
Netflix soon followed the model established by Queen Sono with two more
high profile original productions Blood and Water (2020), and Jiva
(2021). These series all have marked commonalities. All three shows fea-
ture active black female leads and have high production values. While
Queen Sono has a male showrunner in Kagiso Lediga, the two subsequent
shows each have a black woman as showrunner with Nosipho Dumisa
behind Blood and Water, and the showrunner for Jiva being Busisiwe
Ntintili. This commissioning of black African women is of tremendous
significance given how few black women have gained access to directing,
showrunning and writing roles within the South African film and TV
industry despite the governments’ professed commitment to transforming
this industry (Mkosi, 2016; Vourlias, 2018).
Through this approach to commissioning original content Netflix can
boast a direct investment in growing local talent and in given voices to
those within the SA industry who have been sidelined. While there are
clear commercial and political benefits to this approach, it is also notable
that Netflix has managed to make this intervention where other more
traditional film and TV producers and distributors have failed to offer
significant spaces for women directors. Netflix can also use the fore-
grounding of its investment in black women showrunners to market and
grow interest around the work both locally and in terms of its interna-
tional audience. The three texts highlighted here seem designed to offer
particular local experiences but also have themes which make them appeal-
ing to global audiences, especially those in African nations and in the
African diaspora. All three shows can also be seen to adapt popular genres
to the South African context and in this way they are potentially relatable
for global audiences familiar with these genres. Blood and Water is a mys-
tery/crime narrative and teen drama. Queen Sono is a spy/action TV series
while Jiva draws from the formula of the dance film. Blood and Water was
 2 ORIGINAL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS, STREAMING SERVICES… 21

a particularly big success with international audiences attracting an esti-

mated 14 million global viewers (BusinessTech, 2021). This success dem-
onstrates proof that South African stories have appeal for global streaming
viewers. It is however worth noting that this show features elite private
school students and thus represents a very small sliver of South African life.
It will be interesting to see if working class South African stories garner the
same global response.
In the age of variety, subscribers are channelled towards increasingly
niche programme categories or “microgenres” by the interfaces and algo-
rithms of streaming platforms (O’Donnell and Stevens, 2020, 1). Netflix
has played key role in bringing women’s agency to the forefront of its
niche marketing through the popular category “strong female lead. ”
Derya Özkan and Deborah Hardt (2020, 167) explain that Netflix invest-
ment in women-led shows has been made in order to bring the platform
the most prestige and brand recognition. Furthermore, Özkan and Hardt
note the prominence of women within Netflix’s corporate hierarchy and
the platforms tendency to women creatives to commission and produce
their programming (169). This trend appears to apply to the company’s
strategy in South Africa with head of commissioning, Dorothy Ghettuba,
a black African woman.
The Covid 19 pandemic has produced unexpected challenges for
Netflix original Africa productions. Queen Sono was initially commissioned
for a second season but this decision had to be reversed due to production
difficulties produced by the pandemic. This is global trend affecting many
of Netflix global projects but it is worth noting that due existing infra-
structural and resource problems, productions in global South contexts
are perhaps particularly vulnerable to the effects of dramatic and unfore-
seen global events. It remains to be seen how well Netflix’ programme of
local production will recover from the pandemic.
Netflix has made an alliance with South Africa’s National Film and
Video Association (NFVF, 2021) to produce a join fund of R28 million
for local film production. This move to align itself with a state body is
interesting given that Netflix is a large, foreign, commercially driven plat-
form. While the NFVF has been in many partnership with global film
funders, this is significant because it demonstrates the movement of the
worlds’ biggest global streaming OTT service into the South African film
funding space. It shows that we cannot simply pitch local and governmen-
tal against foreign and commercial in the debate on streaming TV in
Africa. Rather, the future of streaming platforms in South Africa may
22 A. SMIT

involve collaborations between struggling state entities and commercial

platform operators. However we must remain vigilant about whether the
productions are made in a way which upholds the remit of our local film
authorities to promote transformation and support the emergence of dis-
tinct local voices in film and TV. What risks are there that Netflix, through
the NFVF might produce homogenous faire which is more in line with
global aesthetics than with distinctly local voices and concerns? This con-
cern is of course counterbalanced with the benefits of showcasing South
African film content, stars and creators to Netflix’s global audience.
While Netflix entry into South Africa has been welcomed as a new
source of opportunities for South African makers, the company does not
accept direct pitches from creators and works only through local agencies
suggesting that Netflix productions are still subject to the gatekeeping
mechanisms of the host country despite their self-positioning as a new
space for local stories.

Original Local Content on Showmax

While the discussion around Netflix hinges on the company’s strategies to
entrench itself into the local market, the debate over Showmax is twofold.
On the one hand Showmax (Multichoice) content needs to be understood
in terms of the company’s need to retain viewers and compete with global
streaming services making entry into the market. On the other hand the
platform needs to be viewed with an awareness of Multichoice’s existing
foothold in South Africa and its expansive footprint in Africa.
Showmax has an advantage over Netflix in terms of its large library of
local content and holdings of African content from its services to a range
of African countries. The multichoice bouquet of services may also have
advantage in terms of establishment within the South African market and
situated knowledge of local audiences. As it forms part of DSTV, the ser-
vice also benefits from being able to capture existing satellite subscribers
and feed them into the streaming service through brand loyalty, cross-­
platform advertising and favoured programming.
Showmax’s original content is perhaps best understood as part of a
broader strategy to retain viewers for DSTV’s bouquet. In contrast to
Netflix’s foregrounding of black women, the first original productions
made for Showmax appear to court local white audiences. Tali’s Wedding
Diary (2017) was the first Showmax original drama show. This mocku-
mentary comedy show presents comic foibles of Tali, a wealthy white
 2 ORIGINAL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS, STREAMING SERVICES… 23

Jewish South African as she prepares for her wedding. The second original
The Girl From St Agnes (2019), also courts the white upper middle class.
It is a teen murder mystery set at an elite highschool. The story is driven
by the murder of a white teenage girl and most of the lead protagonists are
white. It is interesting that both the early original dramas from Netflix and
Showmax feature mystery narratives at elite schools. This perhaps tells us
something about the private school as a site of class contestation and aspi-
ration in South African storytelling. It also reveals that both streaming
services are invested in upper middle class stories which are at a far remove
from the experiences of most South Africans. Showmax’s appeal to white
values and experiences perhaps needs to be understood in terms of how
Multichoice imagines its customers.
Multichoice has identified black South Africans as an important market
and devoted substantial resources to producing programming for this
audience through their Mzansi Magic channel which has quickly become
the most-watched channel on DSTV (Kemp, 2020). However, it would
appear that the company has positioned its streaming service as a tool for
retaining and attracting upper-middle class white consumers who might
be lured away from DSTV by new global competitors. The service must
also produce this content with a transnational audience in mind, and
favouring the English is a way of making shows appealing globally.
Initially two of Multichoice’s major audiences were not readily
addressed by Showmax’s original productions: black South Africans and
white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. I would argue that this is not
because the company is not invested in these markets but rather because
both of these markets are so well catered for by satellite TV channels that
Multichoice could simply pick up a vast catalogue of programming for
these groups from their existing satellite content. In addition to their
exclusive content, Showmax offers a large catalogue of Afrikaans program-
ming made for the Kyknet channel and black-centred content in indige-
nous languages made for the Mzansi magic channel bouquet and for the
Vuzu channel. At present Multichoice appears to be catering to its most
well-developed and lucrative audiences via satellite television services and
then uploading this content for secondary viewing on Showmax. Original
productions for exclusive online viewing seem to designed to cater to
niche interest groups. Indeed, even in the age of global television, stream-
ing TV trends are revealing of the deep social divides amongst South
Africans which are the legacy of our apartheid past.
24 A. SMIT

While the platform’s first two originals catered to white English speak-
ers, their later additions to the catalogue suggest an interest in producing
niche content for specific South African audiences.
Skemerdans (2021) is set in the Western Cape and centre around the
so-called “coloured” community. The characters are described as speaking
AfriKaaps, a regionally specific form of Afrikaans spoken by Black residents
of the Cape formerly classified as “coloured” under apartheid. Through
this production Showmax is demonstrating an interest in producing local
drama that caters to very distinct regional audiences.
One of Showmax’s most-hyped recent show Devilsdorp (2021) demon-
strates of Showmax’s capacity to produce locally based gripping serialised
“true-crime” made popular by US Netflix series such us Making a
Murderer, The Staircase, Don’t F*** with Cats and Tiger King. Devilsdorp
apparently applies this formula to a particularly complex and sensational
local story of the Krugersdorp murders. With this move the platform
might be seen as announcing its direct competition with Netflix. While
true-crime has a long history on television, the Netflix true crime has
developed the formula to fit with the contexts of online “binge” viewing,
but producing suspenseful complex narrative with abundant shocking
twists and revelations. Devilsdorp contains all of these trademark features:
a brutal criminal story, a labyrinthine plot with surprising twists, and a cast
of strange and idiosyncratic people.
Content such as this appears designed to retain the kind of audience
who might be swayed to leave Multichoice/DSTV/Showmax in favour of
a subscription to Netflix. It offers a story with appealing local resonance in
an internationally desirable formula. That the story is primarily about
white people is notable. While the show focusses on an Afrikaans-speaking
community, the use of subtitles on interviews and English-language narra-
tion suggest that this community is being represented for an audience
beyond its boundaries. While the target audience may be white, it is a
vastly different one from the audience catered to by DSTVs more “whole-
some”, family oriented Afrikaans language broadcasting.
It is evident from Showmax’s bouquet that the streaming service has
much more segmented and multi-faceted approach to the idea of original
local content than Netflix. While Netflix has highlighted black experi-
ences, which may be equally relevant to South African audiences and a
global African diaspora, Showmax has focussed on local programmes
catering to niche audience groups. Showmax is perhaps a greater inheritor
 2 ORIGINAL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS, STREAMING SERVICES… 25

of apartheid racial categories that still define South African social life than
is Netflix.
Recently Showmax has commissioned black centred Showmax origi-
nals. Season two of Life with Kelly Khumalo premiered on Showmax in
2021 rather than via the satellite service and Uthando Lodumo (2021) is
another Showmax exclusive. However, these are both reality TV series
trading on celebrity personae rather than fictional drama series. At the end
of 2021, DSTV released The Wife, the platforms first original telenovela.
The show tells the story of a group of Zulu brothers. The programme
broke records on Showmax, surpassing all of the platforms previous pro-
ductions for first-day views. The popularity of The Wife signals a potential
shift away from their current investment in catering to black audiences
through traditional broadcast TV and towards an investment in a South
African TV future marked by much broader access to the streaming mar-
ket by the majority of South Africans. Following the success of The Wife,
Showmax appears to be continuing its investment in black-centred South
African stories, the latest of which is the fantasy series Bloodpsalms (2022)
created by Jamil Qubeka and Layla Swart.
As much as Showmax may dominate local content available for stream-
ing, the platform cannot be understood in separation from DSTV’s Africa
footprint. There is distinct body of programming emerging from DSTV
which might be understood as addressing a Pan-African audience. Unlike
the Netflix approach which arguably caters to diasporic audiences in the
West more than specifically African continental audiences, the address of
DSTV’s Africa content is to the concerns of the African continent. We can
take example the show Our Perfect Wedding SA which was initially
screened on DSTV before being hosted on Showmax. Multichoice has
now reproduced this show via spin-offs in several African countries includ-
ing Zambia, Nigeria, and Kenya. These different African versions of the
show are now available to viewers on Showmax. This demonstrates how
Showmax leverages its audiences in Africa, marketing franchises across a
range of African nations in order to grow their markets and then using this
content to bolster their streaming catalogue on Showmax. Similar exam-
ples include Date My Family, which has been franchised in Nigeria and
Kenya. Showmax is thus not simply an example of a local streaming service
but also a multinational distributor of content.
26 A. SMIT

Conclusion
While traditional broadcasting remains dominant in South Africa, the
operation of streaming services continues to grow in number and influ-
ence. Given the uncertainties surrounding the national broadcaster and
digital migration; along with cheaper broadband and increased pathways
of access via mobile devices; we can expect to see OTT services having a
growing importance in the future of the South African film and TV indus-
try. From a consideration of the investment in local content by both
Showmax and Netflix it is apparent that local content production is viewed
as essential for market penetration in South Africa. Depending on the suc-
cess of these strategies, we can expect powerful new entrants into the
streaming market to follow a similar path of local content production in
the coming years.
This brief overview of Showmax and Netflix original local offerings
demonstrates each platforms’ different ways of conceptualising local con-
tent. Netflix highlights black-centred stories led by strong women in
familiar genre formats and markets these stories to global viewers.
Showmax appears to be courting niche audiences of smaller South African
demographics via its streaming offerings, while repurposing satellite TV
content for its bigger audiences via the Showmax platform. The local con-
tent on Showmax is furthermore influenced by DSTVs investment in audi-
ences on the African continent.
OTTs place local content as the site of value and investment but simul-
taneously transform ideas about what constitutes local TV. The concept of
the local is being unhinged from notions of the national because the
“local” for global streaming services is fundamentally understood in rela-
tion to international distribution networks and global TV trends rather
than in terms of immediate local public service mandates, regulations or
relevant national discourses.
South Africa’s public broadcaster has lurched from one crisis to the
next and new streaming platforms offer creatives within the film and tele-
vision industry new outlets for their work. These platforms also promise to
connect local producers with big transnational audiences. But there is rea-
son for vigilance. As quickly as global streaming services have invested
money into the local industry, they could withdraw this support, especially
if government regulations or problems with infrastructure reduce the
profitability of their operations. Local creatives also need to be wary of the
potential erasure of nationally specific problems and stories in favour of
 2 ORIGINAL LOCAL PRODUCTIONS, STREAMING SERVICES… 27

globally palatable genres with little genuine local specificity. Film and
broadcasting bodies need to maintain investment in local cinemas and
television independently of global production companies to ensure that
our film practitioners maintain distinctive modes of storytelling and
national character.

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 CHAPTER 3

Saudi Arabian Television: The Challenge

of Connecting with Reality

Naomi Sakr

In the early 2000s, when reality TV game show formats were gaining
ground across the globe, sage observers of the television industry doubted
these would match the ‘staying power over decades’ enjoyed by comedy
and drama (Eastman & Ferguson, 2001, 8). Today, two decades later, the
future of comedy and drama lies at the heart of challenges facing Saudi
Arabian TV, both for those behind the screens and for the growing num-
ber of Saudis who want to watch entertaining content that relates to their
everyday lives. Saudi Arabia is remarkable both for its high proportion of
young people, with those aged 15–39 accounting for 45 per cent of the
total (General Authority for Statistics, 2020), and for the way past censor-
ship has denied generations the chance to engage in the kind of storytell-
ing on screen that Saudi writer and producer Hisham Fageeh calls
‘personalized’, ‘authentic and real’ and ‘not sugar-coated’ (quoted in
Vivarelli, 2021a).
Young Saudis’ prodigious use of YouTube to create their own pioneer-
ing drama and comedy outside formal channels was already making waves

N. Sakr (*)
CAMRI Arab Media Centre, University of Westminster, London, UK
e-mail: N.Sakr01@westminster.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 29

Switzerland AG 2023
G. Ogola (ed.), The Future of Television in the Global South,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18833-6_3
30 N. SAKR

even before the satirical video ‘No Woman, No Drive’, set to the tune of
Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’, brought international fame for
Fageeh and Telfaz11 production house when it gained seven million views
in four days in October 2013 (Tepper, 2013). But whereas those content
creators were once careful to avoid official attention (Smith, 2013), their
profile in the Saudi Arabia of the early 2020s has been transformed through
official investment aimed at building a major TV and film industry inside
the country, as this chapter will show. The question is whether the trans-
formation, which like most Saudi media policies to date appears primarily
‘reactive’ (Kraidy, 2021, 104), will produce something that can legiti-
mately be described as ‘Saudi television’. Or will it, in keeping with past
phases of Saudi media expansion led by those in power, depend on an
‘outreach network’ (Al-Rasheed, 2008, 23) of state and non-state actors
which deploys Saudi money but remains nervous of Saudi creativity?
The question aligns with one asked by Michael Curtin in a lecture
reviewing his concept of ‘media capital’ in 2013. Media capital refers to
interacting processes that Curtin sees as having played a structuring role in
how screen industries develop, involving the logic of capitalist accumula-
tion and challenge of managing creative labour in conditions influenced
by national and local institutions. Referring to Chinese policy aimed at
containing the impact of US-based television giants, Curtin noted that the
Chinese government had fostered new enterprises and manoeuvred for-
eign joint-venture partners to ‘serve its broader strategic ambition’ of ulti-
mately competing with Hollywood. He explained this ‘surprising turn in
official policy’ as being ‘largely premised on official suppositions that pop-
ular media have become a crucial means to exercise political and cultural
leadership both at home and abroad.’ He went on to query whether such
policies could ‘foster truly popular media’ or were doomed to ‘wither in
the shadow of official ambition’ (Curtin, 2014, 3).
This chapter considers the evolution and trajectory of a problematic
construct we will heuristically call ‘Saudi Arabian television’. It does so in
light of notions inherent in Curtin’s analysis of the Chinese conundrum,
whereby ‘constraints on content’ and privileges for ‘state-sanctioned
enterprises’ impede development of those very outputs that are ‘signature
genres of the world’s most successful television enterprises’, namely drama
and comedy (Curtin, 2014, 12). It starts by reviewing motives for Saudi
investment in television from the 1990s to the present day. It goes on to
examine how non-Saudi companies and individuals have been engaged to
nurture a Saudi-based entertainment industry of international stature.
 3 SAUDI ARABIAN TELEVISION: THE CHALLENGE OF CONNECTING… 31

From there it explores some background to what is widely portrayed as a

‘new’ approach to screen production in Saudi Arabia and concludes by
assessing whether this approach will generate vibrancy and innovation.

Leadership Narratives Promoted via

Popular Programming
Saudi Arabia is an attractive market for foreign business because it com-
bines size with affluence and its young population is growing rapidly.
Ranked among the five most populous Arab states, it has regained what
the World Bank calls ‘high-income’ status, along with its rich, but much
smaller, oil-exporting Gulf neighbours. As such it is not alone among
high-income countries in the Global South, as Chile and Uruguay are in
the same category. Its large economy entitles it to membership of the G20
together with eight other Global South countries including Brazil, India
and South Africa. But its political system, being indisputably authoritarian,
sets it apart from most of the G20 except for China and Russia. It took
152nd place out of a possible 167 in a worldwide democracy index for
2021 (Economist Intelligence, 2022, 16; 29) and its ranking in the
Reporters sans frontières World Press Freedom Index (Saudi Arabia | RSF)
worsened to 170 out of 180 between 2017 and 2021.
A suffocating political system, together with distribution of oil wealth
and ruling family patronage in ways that helped to create an ‘oligarchic
structure of princes on top of the state’ (Hertog, 2010, 246), are factors
underlying the deterritorialization that marked Saudi media expansion
through newspapers based abroad in the 1970s and satellite television
channels established in London, Rome, Cairo and Beirut in the 1990s and
2000s. That is to say: Saudi ruling family members and their associates
sought to capitalise on their personal wealth and international business
connections to pursue an agenda of media liberalisation abroad that was
impossible under the strict rules controlling television in the kingdom
itself in the name of religious conservatism. That they had the tacit bless-
ing of the king and different clusters of senior princes was evidenced in
financial and infrastructural support provided through state institutions
that allowed and even facilitated reception of these Saudi-owned, foreign-­
based, pan-Arab satellite channels inside Saudi Arabia (Sakr, 2001, 40–49;
Sakr, 2007, 169–172). Mohamed Zayani summarises the process (2012,
308) as a ‘dual media strategy’, motivated by a ‘security imperative’,
32 N. SAKR

involving ‘decentralised, open and modern transnational media systems

abroad’ alongside ‘state-controlled and state-managed’ systems at home.
In tandem with the ‘centripetal’ domestic media system aimed at uphold-
ing religious sensibilities in the interests of perceived political stability, the
reach of the ‘centrifugal’ transnational media presence was intended to
confront critics, project a favourable image and reinforce Saudi Arabia’s
regional standing (Zayani, 2012, 308).
A distinction has thus existed since the 1990s between Saudi-owned
television and television based in Saudi Arabia. It is this distinction that
more recent government policy aimed at investing large sums in a home-
grown television industry has sought to dissolve. That policy emerged
following the accession of King Salman in 2015. April 2016 saw the launch
of Vision 2030, spearheaded by Salman’s son, then Deputy Crown Prince
Mohammed Bin Salman, who was promoted to Crown Prince in 2017,
aged 31. Under its first objective of ‘building a more vibrant society’,
Vision 2030 envisaged ‘creating a home-grown entertainment industry’
(Grand & Wolff, 2020, 16). Prompted by a McKinsey Global Institute
report issued in December 2015 when Saudi Arabia was facing a fiscal
downturn (Grand & Wolff, 2020, 12), Vision 2030 provided the basis for
a new public relations narrative, both internal and external, that placed
Mohammed Bin Salman at the forefront of efforts presented as creating a
modern, liberal society that would diversify away from dependence on oil.
Behind the rhetoric, however, the Crown Prince’s approach to popular
television and its purpose was far from liberal. McKinsey’s researchers had
urged shifting from a ‘government-led economic model to a more market-­
based approach’ (quoted in Grand & Wolff, 2020, 65). Yet Mohammed
Bin Salman, reportedly long anxious to gain control of the foreign-based
television networks privately owned by Saudi moguls (Kerr, 2018), used
his new-found power as Crown Prince to do so by force.
The key transition took place between November 2017 and early 2018,
when the Saudi owners of three television networks involved in the long-­
established decentralised outreach system—Middle East Broadcasting
Centre (MBC), Rotana Media Group, and Arab Radio and Television
(ART)—were incarcerated in the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh together
with around 200 other Saudi tycoons until they agreed to hand over assets
to the government under Mohammed Bin Salman. Assets acquired by this
means enabled the government to pursue business and political agendas
previously associated with the billionaire private network owners, whose
status as ‘private’ entrepreneurs was anyway belied by their membership
 3 SAUDI ARABIAN TELEVISION: THE CHALLENGE OF CONNECTING… 33

of, or close links to, to the ruling family and to each other: Saleh Kamel
having initially been a partner with Walid al-Ibrahim in MBC in the early
1990s, and then a partner with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in ART before
Alwaleed cut his stake in ART in 2003 in favour of expanding Rotana
(Sakr, 2001, 42–43; Sakr, 2007, 122, 174–176).
To put the 2017–18 transition to government-dominated entertain-
ment plans in context, it is necessary to dwell a moment on the scale of
those owners’ resources, their international connections and their political
motives for having invested in TV. Alwaleed, a fixture on the annual Forbes
Billionaires List until Forbes removed him and Saleh Kamel in 2018 after
the Ritz Carlton episode (Dolan, 2018), acquired shares in global giants
such as Time Warner, Disney and News Corp in the 1990s and attracted
News Corp investment in Rotana in 2010–12 (Sakr, 2013, 2285). These
avenues of media influence enabled him to craft an international image of
himself as a liberal progressive, keen on promoting freedom of expression
and political reform, albeit within self-serving limits (Sakr, 2013, 2292,
2295–96). Saleh Kamel, who died in 2020, was born into a family with
royal connections, which served him in building the Dallah al-Barakah
conglomerate and ART (Galal, 2015, 83–86). ART, less glitzy than
Rotana or MBC, was intended for a putative silent Muslim majority, prop-
agating Islamic teachings that ‘call for tolerance’ (Galal, 2015, 92). Walid
al-Ibrahim, a brother-in-law of King Fahd (ruler from 1982 to 2005) with
a US education and assets in the US and UK, launched MBC from a $12
million London headquarters in 1991 with the aim of creating an Arabic
equivalent of CNN to fill the gap in Arabic-language television news that
had become glaringly apparent when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990
(AlSaied, 2015, 99–103; Sakr, 2005, 38–39). After the 9/11 attacks on
US buildings in 2001 focused attention on the radicalisation of young
Saudis, Al-Ibrahim spoke out against ‘enemies of development’ in the
kingdom, saying it was a duty to break with ‘obsolete traditions’ (AlSaied,
2015, 102–103) and ‘get rid of the Taliban mentality’ (quoted in Sakr,
2007, 112).
The billionaire owners’ deradicalization agenda was reflected in the
type of entertainment shown on their multi-channel networks. A fourth,
Orbit pay-TV, also began in the 1990s but merged with Kuwaiti-owned
Showtime Arabia in 2009. Under largely non-Arab management (Sakr,
2016, 178–80), the networks showed films, sitcoms, reality shows, anima-
tions and music videos imported from Hollywood and elsewhere, thereby
avoiding engagement with local talent but incurring the wrath of Saudi
34 N. SAKR

clerics, for whom Western imports represented the worst depravity. By

bringing the TV owners under his control while simultaneously crushing
the clerics, Mohammed Bin Salman seemed bent on ending the duality of
the kingdom’s foreign-based and locally based television systems. This
would be one dimension of a turning point in the historic ‘division of
labour’ between Saudi Arabia’s political and religious authorities, whereby
clerics endorsed the princes in return for exercising religious control over
society, reflecting political ‘instrumentalization’ of religious authority
(Mouline, 2015, 66).
According to one commentator, Mohammed Bin Salman and ‘his con-
fidants understood intimately the transformative power’ of ‘new forms of
communication’ like YouTube, which Saudi satirists and other creatives
were using to attract large followings (Smith Diwan, 2018). Hence their
determination to ‘establish state control over new media and to unify the
public under a new national narrative’, cultivated by co-opting social
media influencers as advocates for the new regime (Smith Diwan, 2018).
What happened during those months when TV billionaires were detained
in the Royal Carlton remained mostly a matter of press conjecture, as
those affected had been sworn, in the words of Alwaleed Bin Talal, to
secrecy and confidentiality (Schatzker, 2018). Initially it raised doubts
among foreign companies about doing business with the regime run by
Mohammed Bin Salman, and those doubts were compounded when the
murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 was also laid
at his door. Endeavour, a Hollywood talent agency recruited by the Crown
Prince to help develop a Saudi film and television industry, was among the
first to sever ties.
The scruples did not last long. By January 2021 Hollywood executives
were again showing their eagerness to work in Saudi Arabia (Walt, 2021),
against a backdrop of heavy government investment in film and television,
vocally supported by erstwhile magnates of Saudi-owned TV. Alwaleed
declared that anyone failing to support Mohammed Bin Salman’s ‘new
era’ was a ‘traitor’ (Schatzker, 2018). Walid al-Ibrahim, having ceded 60
per cent of MBC ownership to the government, accepted decisive changes
in MBC policy in terms of content, production and location. March 2018
saw the sudden axing of highly popular Turkish dramas from three MBC
channels and a commitment to hire writers and directors who would pro-
duce ‘more premium content Arab dramas’ (Al-Tamimi, 2018). Besides
serving the homegrown television project, that decision mirrored official
Saudi dislike of Turkish foreign policy. September 2018 saw Peter Smith,
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Photo by Mr. Charles Temple.

Scene in the Bauchi Highlands 184

Photo by Mr. Charles Temple.

Scene on the Southern Nigeria (Extension)

Railway 194
Photo by Mr. Freer-Hill.

Plate-laying on the Northern Nigeria Railway 194

Photo by Captain Mance.

Landing Place at Baro 196

Group of Railway Labourers—Baro 196

Village Head-men 198

Women Cotton Spinners 232

Men Weaving 232

MAPS
Map of Southern Nigeria 46

” Northern Nigeria 92

” Illustrating an Unauthorized Scheme

of Amalgamation 204
 PART I
THOUGHTS ON TREK
 CHAPTER I
ON WHAT HAS BEEN AND MAY BE

After trekking on horseback five hundred miles or so, you acquire

the philosophy of this kind of locomotion. For it has a philosophy of
its own, and with each day that passes you become an apter pupil.
You learn many things, or you hope you do, things internally evolved.
But when you come to the point of giving external shape to them by
those inefficient means the human species is as yet virtually
confined to—speech and writing—you become painfully conscious of
inadequate powers. Every day brings its own panorama of nature
unfolding before your advance; its own special series of human
incidents—serious, humorous, irritating, soothing—its own thought
waves. And it is not my experience that these long silent hours—for
conversation with one’s African companions is necessarily limited
and sporadic—induce, by what one would imagine natural re-action,
descriptive expansiveness when, pen in hand, one seeks to give
substance to one’s impressions. Rather the reverse, alack! Silent
communing doth seem to cut off communication between brain and
pen. You are driven in upon yourself, and the channel of outward
expression dries up. For a scribbler, against whom much has been
imputed, well-nigh all the crimes, indeed, save paucity of output, the
phenomenon is not without its alarming side, at least to one’s self. In
one’s friends it may well inspire a sense of blessed relief.
One day holds much—so much of time, so much of space, so
much of change. The paling stars or the waning moon greet your first
swing into the saddle, and the air strikes crisp and chill. You are still
there as the orange globe mounts the skies, silhouetting, perchance,
a group of palms, flooding the crumbling walls of some African
village, to whose inhabitants peace has ceased to make walls
necessary—a sacrifice of the picturesque which, artistically, saddens
—or lighting some fantastic peak of granite boulders piled up as
though by Titan’s hand. You are still there when the rays pour
downwards from on high, strike upwards from dusty track and
burning rock, and all the countryside quivers and simmers in the
glow. Sometimes you may still be there—it has happened, to me—
when the shadows fall swiftly, and the cry of the crown-birds, seeking
shelter for the night on some marshy spot to their liking, heralds the
dying of the day. From cold, cold great enough to numb hands and
feet, to gentle warmth, as on a June morning at home; from fierce
and stunning heat, wherein, rocked by the “triple” of your mount, you
drowse and nod, to cooling evening breeze. You pass, in the twenty-
four hours, through all the gamut of climatic moods, which, at this
time of the year, makes this country at once invigorating and, to my
thinking, singularly treacherous, especially on the Bauchi plateau,
over which a cold wind often seems to sweep, even in the intensity
of the noontide sun, and where often a heavy overcoat seems
insufficient to foster warmth when darkness falls upon the land.
So much of time and change—each day seems composed of
many days. Ushered in on level plain, furrowed by the agriculturist’s
hoe, dotted with colossal trees, smiling with farm and hamlet; it
carries you onward through many miles of thick young forest, where
saplings of but a few years’ growth dispute their life with rank and
yellow grasses, and thence in gradual ascent through rock-strewn
paths until your eye sees naught but a network of hills; to leave you
at its close skirting a valley thickly overgrown with bamboo and semi-
tropical vegetation, where the flies do congregate, and seek,
unwelcomed, a resting-place inside your helmet. Dawning amid a
sleeping town, heralded by the sonorous call of the Muslim priest,
which lets loose the vocal chords of human, quadruped and fowl,
swelling into a murmur of countless sounds and increasing bustle; it
will take you for many hours through desolate stretches, whence
human life, if life there ever was, has been extirpated by long years
of such lawlessness and ignorance as once laid the blight of grisly
ruin over many a fair stretch of English homestead. Yes, you may, in
this land of many memories, and mysteries still unravelled, pass,
within the same twenty-four hours, the flourishing settlement with
every sign of plenty and of promise, and the blackened wreck of
communities once prosperous before this or that marauding band of
freebooters brought fire and slaughter, death to the man, slavery to
the woman and the infant—much as our truculent barons, whose
doughty deeds we are taught in childhood to admire, acted in their
little day. The motive and the immediate results differed not at all.
What the ultimate end may be here lies in the womb of the future, for
at this point the roads diverge. With us those dark hours vanished
through the slow growth of indigenous evolution. Here the strong
hand of the alien has interposed, and, stretching at present the
unbridged chasm of a thousand years, has enforced reform from
without.
And what a weird thing it is when you come to worry it out, that this
alien hand should have descended and compelled peace! Viewed in
the abstract, one feels it may be discussed as a problem of theory,
for a second. One feels it permissible to ask, will the people, or
rather will the Governors of the people which has brought peace to
this land, which has enabled the peasant to till the soil and reap his
harvest in quietness, which has allowed the weaver to pursue and
profit by his industry in safety, which has established such security
throughout the land, that you may see a woman and her child
travelling alone and unprotected in the highways, carrying all their
worldly possessions between them; will this people’s ultimate action
be as equally beneficial as the early stages have been, or will its
interference be the medium through which evils, not of violence, but
economic, and as great as the old, will slowly, but certainly and
subtly, eat into the hearts of these Nigerian homes and destroy their
happiness, not of set purpose, but automatically, inevitably so? I say
that, approached as an abstract problem, it seems permissible to ask
one’s self that question as one wanders here and there over the face
of the land, and one hears the necessity of commercially developing
the country to save the British taxpayers’ pockets, of the gentlemen
who want to exploit the rubber forests of the Bauchi plateau, of the
Chambers of Commerce that require the reservation of lands for
British capitalists, and of those who argue that a native, who learned
how to smelt tin before we knew there was tin in the country, should
no longer be permitted to do so, now that we wish to smelt it
ourselves, and of the railways and the roads which have to be built—
yes, it seems permissible, though quite useless. But I confess that
when one studies what is being done out here in the concrete, from
the point of view of the men who are doing it, then it is no longer
permissible to doubt. When one sees this man managing, almost
single-handed, a country as large as Scotland; when one sees that
man, living in a leaky mud hut, holding, by the sway of his
personality, the balance even between fiercely antagonistic races, in
a land which would cover half a dozen of the large English counties;
when one sees the marvels accomplished by tact, passionate
interest and self-control, with utterly inadequate means, in
continuous personal discomfort, short-handed, on poor pay, out here
in Northern Nigeria—then one feels that permanent evil cannot
ultimately evolve from so much admirable work accomplished, and
that the end must make for good.

“THROUGH PLAIN AND VALLEY AND MOUNTAIN SIDE.”

 “WE HAVE TREKKED TOGETHER.”

And, thinking over this personal side of the matter as one jogs
along up hill and down dale, through plain and valley and mountain
side, through lands of plenty and lands of desolation, past carefully
fenced-in fields of cotton and cassava, past the crumbling ruins of
deserted habitations, along the great white dusty road through the
heart of Hausaland, along the tortuous mountain track to the pagan
stronghold, there keeps on murmuring in one’s brain the refrain:
“How is it done? How is it done?” Ten years ago, nay, but six, neither
property nor life were safe. The peasant fled to the hills, or hurried at
nightfall within the sheltering walls of the town. Now he is
descending from the hills and abandoning the towns.
And the answer forced upon one, by one’s own observations, is
that the incredible has been wrought, primarily and fundamentally,
not by this or that brilliant feat of arms, not by Britain’s might or
Britain’s wealth, but by a handful of quiet men, enthusiastic in their
appreciation of the opportunity, strong in their sense of duty, keen in
their sense of right, firm in their sense of justice, who, working in an
independence, and with a personal responsibility in respect to which,
probably, no country now under the British flag can offer a parallel,
whose deeds are unsung, and whose very names are unknown to
their countrymen, have shown, and are every day showing, that, with
all her faults, Britain does still breed sons worthy of the highest
traditions of the race.
 CHAPTER II
ON THE GREAT WHITE ROAD

You may fairly call it the Great White Road to Hausaland, although
it does degenerate in places into a mere track where it pierces some
belt of shea-wood or mixed trees, and you are reduced to Indian file.
But elsewhere it merits its appellation, and it glimmers ghostly in the
moonlight as it cuts the plain, cultivated to its very edge with guinea-
corn and millet, cassava and cotton, beans and pepper. And you
might add the adjective, dusty, to it. For dusty at this season of the
year it certainly is. Dusty beyond imagination. Surely there is no dust
like this dust as it sweeps up at you, impelled by the harmattan
blowing from the north, into your eyes and mouth and nose and hair?
Dust composed of unutterable things. Dust which countless bare
human feet have tramped for months. Dust mingled with the manure
of thousands of oxen, horses, sheep and goats. Dust which converts
the glossy skin of the African into an unattractive drab, but which
cannot impair his cheerfulness withal. Dust which eats its way into
your boxes, and defies the brush applied to your clothes, and finds
its way into your soup and all things edible and non-edible. Dust
which gets between you and the sun, and spoils your view of the
country, wrapping everything in a milky haze which distorts distances
and lies thick upon the foliage. The morning up to nine, say, will be
glorious and clear and crisp, and then, sure enough, as you halt for
breakfast and with sharpened appetite await the looked-for “chop,” a
puff of wind will spring up from nowhere and in its train will come the
dust. The haze descends and for the rest of the day King Dust will
reign supreme. It is responsible for much sickness, this Sahara dust,
of that my African friends and myself are equally convinced. You may
see the turbaned members of the party draw the lower end of that
useful article of apparel right across the face up to the eyes when the
wind begins to blow. The characteristic litham of the Tuareg, the men
of the desert, may have had its origin in the necessity, taught by
experience, of keeping the dust out of nose and mouth. I have been
told by an officer of much Northern Nigerian experience, that that
terrible disease, known as cerebro-spinal meningitis, whose
characteristic feature is inflammation of the membranes of the brain,
and which appears in epidemic form out here, is aggravated, if not
induced, in his opinion—and he assures me in the opinion of many
natives he has consulted—by this disease-carrying dust. In every
town and village in the Northern Hausa States, you will see various
diseases of the eye lamentably rife, and here, I am inclined to think,
King Dust also plays an active and discreditable part.

A GROUP OF TUAREGS.
 A BORNU OX.

The Great White Road. It thoroughly deserves that title from the
point where one enters the Kano Province coming from Zaria. It is
there not only a great white road but a very fine one, bordered on
either side by a species of eucalyptus, and easily capable, so far as
breadth is concerned, of allowing the passage of two large
automobiles abreast. I, personally, should not care to own the
automobile which undertook the journey, because the road is not
exactly what we would call up-to-date. Thank Heaven that there is
one part of the world, at least, to be found where neither roads, nor
ladies’ costumes are “up-to-date.” If the Native Administration of the
Kano Emirate had nothing else to be commended for, and under the
tactful guidance of successive Residents it has an increasing
account to its credit, the traveller would bear it in grateful recollection
for its preservation of the trees in the immediate vicinity of, and
sometimes actually on the Great White Road itself. It is difficult to
over-estimate the value to man and beast, to the hot and dusty
European, to the weary-footed carrier, to the patient pack-ox, and
cruelly-bitted native horse, of the occasional shady tree at the edge
of or on the road. And what magnificent specimens of the vegetable
kingdom the fertile soil of Kano Province does carry—our New
Forest giants, though holding their own for beauty and shape and, of
course, clinging about our hearts with all their wealth of historical
memories and inherited familiarity, would look puny in comparison.
With one exception I do not think anything on the adverse side of
trivialities has struck me more forcibly out here than the insane
passion for destroying trees which seems to animate humanity,
White and Black. In many parts of the country I have passed through
the African does appear to appreciate his trees, both as shade for his
ordinary crops and special crops (such as pepper, for instance,
which you generally find planted under a great tree) and cattle. In
Kano Province, for instance, this is very noticeable. But in other parts
he will burn down his trees, or rather let them burn down, with
absolute equanimity, making no effort to protect them (which on
many occasions he could easily do) when he fires the grasses
(which, pace many learned persons, it seems to me, he is compelled
by his agricultural needs to do—I speak now of the regions I have
seen). I have noticed quantities of splendid and valuable timber
ruined in this way. The European—I should say some Europeans—
appears to suffer from the same complaint. It is the fashion—if the
word be not disrespectful, and Heaven forfend that the doctors
should be spoken of disrespectfully in this part of the world, of all
places—among the new school of tropical medicine out here to
condemn all growing things in a wholesale manner. In the eyes of
some, trees or plants of any kind in the vicinity of a European station
are ruthlessly condemned. Others are specially incensed against low
shrubs. Some are even known to pronounce the death-warrant of the
pine-apple, and I met an official at a place, which shall be nameless,
who went near weeping tears of distress over a fine row of this fruit
which he had himself planted, and which were threatened, as he put
it, by the ferocity of the local medical man. In another place
destruction hangs over a magnificent row of mango trees—and for
beauty and luxuriousness of foliage the mango tree is hard to beat—
planted many years ago by the Roman Catholic Fathers near one of
their mission stations; and in still another, an official, recently
returned on leave, found to his disgust that a group of trees he
especially valued had been cut down during his absence by a
zealous reformer of the medical world.

“MAGNIFICENT SPECIMENS OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM.”

In the southern portions of Southern Nigeria, where Sir Walter

Egerton is a resolute foe of medical vandalism, I am inclined to think
that the doctors will find it about as easy to cope with plant growth as
King Canute is reputed to have found the waves of the seashore. But
in Northern Nigeria and in the northern regions of Southern Nigeria it
is a different matter, and one is tempted to query whether the
sacrifice of all umbrageous plants in the neighbourhood of official
and other residences because they are supposed to harbour—and
no doubt do harbour—the larvæ of all sorts of objectionable winged
insects, may not constitute a remedy worse even than the disease. I
can imagine few things more distressing for a European in Northern
Nigeria, gasping in the mid-day heat of the harmattan season, to
have nothing between his eyes, as he gazes but beyond his
verandah, but the glare of the red laterite soil and the parched-up
grasses and little pink flowers springing up amidst it; and one feels
disposed to say to the devoted medicos, “De grâce, Messieurs, pas
de trop zèle.”
In the particular part of the country of which I am now writing,
another aspect of the case strikes you. In very many rest-camps,
and mining camps one comes across, the ground is cleared of every
particle of shade-giving tree—cleared as flat as a billiard table. There
is no shade for man or beast. Now a grass-house is not the coolest
place in the world with an African noon-day sun beating down upon it
—I mean an all-grass-house, not the cool native house with clay
walls and thatched roof, be it noted—and ... well, I content myself
with the remark that it would be much cooler than it is with the shade
of a tree falling athwart it. Then they—the Public Works Department
—have built a road from Riga-Chikum to Naraguta. I will say nothing
about it except that it is, without exception, the hottest road and the
one more abounding in flies that I have struck in this part of the
world. And I assign a proper proportion of both phenomena to the—
to me—inexplicable mania of the builders thereof to hew down the
trees on the side of the road.
To come back to our Great White Road. What a history it might not
tell! For how many centuries have not Black and Brown men pursued
upon it the goal of their trade and their ambitions; have not fled in
frantic terror from the pursuer, ankle deep in dust. What tragedies
have not been hurried along its dusty whiteness. To-day you will
meet upon it objects of interest almost every hour. Now, a herd of
oxen on their way to doom, to feed the Southern Nigerian markets;
now, a convoy of donkeys going south, in charge, maybe, of Tuareg
slaves from far-distant Sokoto, or the Asben oases. These will be
loaded with potash and tobacco. And even as you pass this one
going south, another convoy of donkeys, going north, loaded with
salt and kolas, will be trudging along behind you. Anon, some
picturesquely-clothed and turbaned horseman will be seen
approaching, who, with ceremonious politeness, will either dismount
and salute, or throw up his right hand—doing the “jaffi,” as it is
termed.
The African is credited with utter callousness to human suffering.
Like most generalities concerning him, it is exaggerated. Life in
primitive communities (and to get a proper mental grasp of this
country, and its people, you must turn up your Old Testament and
read Exodus and Leviticus) is much cheaper and of less account
than in more highly civilized ones. That is a commonplace too often
forgotten by people who accuse the African of ingrained callousness.
As a matter of fact, I have noticed many sights on the Great White
Road which show how rash such generalities can be. I have seen
water handed from one party to another under circumstances which
spoke of kindly appreciation of a want. I have frequently seen
fathers, or elder brothers, carrying small children on their backs. The
Residents have known cases of men found injured on the road who
have been tended and taken home by utter strangers; the Good
Samaritan over again, and in his old-world setting.
 CHAPTER III
ON THE CARRIER

“Some Africans I have met”—the words conjure up a series of

powerful chiefs, or fantastic “witch doctors,” or faultlessly-attired
barristers from some centre of light and learning on the Coast. I shall
be content—if only by recording my gratitude for much amusement
and no little instruction—with jotting down a brief line or two which
shall be wholly concerned with a type of African to whom not the
greatest Negrophile that ever lived would dream of applying the
epithet distinguished. I refer to the carrier.
To-morrow I part with my carriers. We have trekked together for
exactly four weeks—one little man, indeed, with a goatee beard and
a comical grin, has been with me six weeks, having rejoined from my
original lot. And at the end of four weeks one gets to know
something of one’s carriers. Presumably, by that time they have their
own opinions of you.
Whence do they come, and whither do they go, these vagrants of
the road, flotsam and jetsam that we create? Runaway slaves, ne’er-
do-weels, criminals, driven from their respective folds, unsuccessful
farmers, or restless spirits animated by a love of travel and
adventure—la vie des grands chemins. Reckless, improvident,
gamblers, wastrels; they are altogether delightful people. As an
ecclesiastical friend invariably winds up with a description of the man
(or woman) he is interested in, who has broken most of the
commandments, and would have broken the others had
circumstances allowed: “X—— is the very best of creatures really,
and I love him (or her)”—so it is impossible not to like the carrier. For
with all his faults, he attracts. His spirit of independence appeals
somehow. Here to-day, gone to-morrow. And, like the sailor, with a
sweetheart at every port, somebody else’s sweetheart will do quite
as well at a pinch. Then consider his cheeriness. Be the load heavy
or light, be the march long or short, he has always a smile and a
salute for you as you pass along the line. I speak as I have found,
and many men will bear me out. Some men may have a different tale
to tell, sometimes with justification, sometimes, I think, without. For if
there is the bad type of carrier—and there is: I have found two in my
crowd, but their “little games” have fallen foul of the views of the
majority—there is also the type of European who, shall we say,
forgets. He gets into camp a long way ahead of his men, tired and
hungry maybe, and curses them for a pack of lazy scoundrels. He
forgets, or long custom has blunted perception, the potency of that
sixty-pound load. Think of it! Sixty pounds—the regulation load. Sixty
pounds on your head for anything from fifteen to thirty miles.
I say consider that under these conditions the man is cheerful.
Nay, he is more. He is full of quips and jokes ... at the expense of his
companions, and quite as much at the expense of himself. If you
have a special peculiarity about you, ten to one he crystallises it into
a name, and henceforth you are spoken of not as the “Baturi” the
White man, but as “the man with a back like a camel,” or “white hair,”
or the “hump-backed man of war,” or “red pepper,” or “hot water,” or
as the “man with a face like a woman,” and so on. It is this
extraordinary cheeriness which appeals to the average white human.
That a creature of flesh and blood like yourself, carrying sixty pounds
on his head for hours and hours in the blazing sun, dripping with
perspiration, pestered by flies, and earning sixpence a day—
threepence of which is supposed to be spent in “chop”—and doing
this not for one day, but for day after day, sometimes for over a week
without a sit-down, can remain cheerful—that is the incredible thing.
One hopes that it is a lesson. Assuredly it ought to be an inspiration.
These votaries of Mark Tapley are severely tried at times. Yesterday,
after a tramp from six-thirty to half-past twelve, the camp aimed for
was found to be tenanted by other white men and their carriers.
There was nothing for it but to push on another eleven miles to the
nearest village and stream. Just as dusk began to sweep down upon
the land, the first carrier straggled in—smiling. “No. 1,” a long-limbed
man with the stride of an ostrich, who always goes by that name
because he is always the first to arrive, delighted at having kept up
his reputation; “Nos. 2” and “3” equally pleased with themselves for
being close at his heels, and coming in for their share of the prize
money in consequence. And then, in twos and threes, dribbling up,
some unutterably weary, others less so, all galvanised into new life
by a chance joke, generally at their own expense; joining in the
acclamation which invariably greets the strong man of the party—the
mighty Maiduguli, to wit—who, because of his muscles, carries the
heaviest load, and whom Fate decrees, owing to that load’s
contents, shall be the last to start, both at the opening of the day and
after the breakfast halt, but who manages to forge ahead, and to turn
up among the first six, chaffing the tired ones on their way, and
stimulating them to fresh exertions. And when all had reached their
destination they had to stick up a tent by the light of the moon.
I have asked you to consider the carrier’s cheeriness and powers
of endurance—and my lot at least are not, with the exception of the
mighty man of valour already mentioned, big men physically. I ask
you now to consider his honesty—honesty in the literal sense and
honesty in the fulfilment of a bargain. For hours this man is alone—
so far as you are concerned—with your goods. You may, you
probably are, either miles ahead of him, or miles behind him. The
headman—“Helleman,” as he is termed by the rank and file—is at
the rear of the column. Between the first man and the “Helleman”
several miles may intervene, and so on, proportionately. During
these hours of total lack of supervision, your property is absolutely at
the carrier’s mercy. Your effects. The uniform case in which, he
knows, you keep your money. The uniform case, of which he knows
the lock is broken. The “chop-box,” of which he knows the padlock is
missing. But at the end of every day your things are intact. I have not
lost a matchbox, except a few dozen or so that white men have
stolen (I may say it is the local fashion—I have caught it myself, and
steal matches regularly whenever I get the chance). The only thing I
have lost is something I lost myself. You may say “Yes, but think of
the risk and the difficulty of breaking open a uniform case on the
road.” As for the difficulty, there is little or none. A vigorous fling upon
one of these granitic boulders, and there would be precious little left
of your uniform case. As for the risk, well, in many parts of the
country I have traversed, a carrier could get clear away with his loot,
and not all the Sarikuna and dogari in the country would set hands
on him. Faithfulness to the bargain struck. Well, I have passed
through the mining country. Some of the mines declare they are
short of labour—those that do not suffer from that complaint declare
that those that do have themselves to thank for it—and the mines
pay ninepence a day for work which is much lighter than that of a
carrier, who gets sixpence. The few shillings a carrier would sacrifice
by deserting, he would recoup at the mines in ten days, or less. I
have not had a desertion. The only man of the crowd who has
absconded, did so openly. On a certain spot on the line of march he
suddenly got a fit of fanaticism, or something unhealthy of that kind,
and declared himself to be proof against sword cuts. Whereupon,
being laughed at, he “gat unto himself” a sword and smote himself
with much vigour upon the head, with the natural result of inflicting a
deep scalp wound nearly seven inches long. The next morning,
finding his load incommoded him in consequence, he returned
homewards, a sadder, and, presumably, a wiser man.
If I were a poet I would write an ode to the African carrier. I cannot
do justice to him in prose. But I place on record this inadequate
tribute to the reckless, cheery, loyal rascal, who seems to me a
mixture of the knight of the road and the poacher—for both of whom
I have ever conceived a warm affection ... in books—and with whom
I shall part to-morrow with regret, remembering oft in days to come
that cheery “Sanu zāki” as I passed him, footsore, weary and
perspiring, on the road.
 CHAPTER IV
ON AFRICAN MODESTY AND AFRICAN COURTESY

Each twenty-four hours brings its own series of events and its own
train of thoughts following upon them. A new incident, it may be of
the most trivial kind, sets the mind working like an alarum; a petty
act, a passing word, have in them revealing depths of character.
Nature seems such an open book here. She does not hide her
secrets. She displays them; which means that she has none; and, in
consequence, that she is as she was meant to be, moral. The
trappings of hide-bound convention do not trammel her every stride
like the hobble skirts of the foolish women who parade their shapes
along the fashionable thoroughfares of London. What quagmires of
error we sink into when we weigh out our ideas of morality to the
African standard—such a very low one it is said.
Well, I have covered a good deal of ground in this country—
although I have not been in it very long, measured in time—and I
have seen many thousands of human beings. I have seen the Hausa
woman and the bush Fulani woman in their classical robes. I have
seen the Yoruba woman bathing in the Ogun, clad only in the natural
clothing of her own dusky skin. I have seen the scantily-attired
Gwarri and Ibo woman, and the woman of the Bauchi highlands with
her bunch of broad green leaves “behind and before,” and nothing
else, save a bundle of wood or load of sorts on her head, or a hoe in
her hand. I have visited many African homes, sometimes
announced, sometimes not, at all hours of the day, and sometimes of
the night. I have passed the people on the beaten track, and sought
and found them off the beaten track. I have yet to see outside our
cantonments—where the wastrels drift—a single immodest gesture
on the part of man or woman. Humanity which is of Nature is, as
Nature herself, moral. There is no immodesty in nakedness which
“knows not that it is naked.” The Kukuruku girl, whose only garment
is a single string of beads round neck and waist, is more modest
than your Bond Street dame clad in the prevailing fashion,
suggesting nakedness. Break up the family life of Africa, undermine