Like millions of South Africans and other people around the world, I watched The Polygamist on Netflix. Most people who watch the series are captivated by the drama and the impressive acting on display.
The story of the life of Jonasi Gomora and his choices pertaining to extramarital affairs is loaded with the kind of drama that compels the audience to binge-watch and navigate passionate emotion.
But for me, The Polygamist is not an entertaining drama about promiscuity; it is a powerful political story about the impact of structural and systemic factors on the lives of black people and how they have shaped and defined generations of families and individuals.
There are three specific themes that stand out for me: the psychosocial trauma of poverty, heteronormative patriarchy and the burden of disease on black communities.
Jonasi, who on the surface is the villain of the story, is both a victim and a perpetrator of various forms of trauma. On the one hand, he is a man whose insatiable sexual appetite causes untold suffering to his wife, family and the women who are unfortunate to be his partners.
On the other hand, he is a product of a system that dehumanises the poor. His ostentatious lifestyle is the direct result of the tension of growing up in poverty and having to pull himself up by his bootstraps to survive its de-civilising impact. It is not uncommon for black people who grew up in poverty to become overt in their materialism in later life.
This is in part because poverty renders people invisible and strips them of their dignity. To reclaim it, they turn to using symbols of wealth to compensate for the battered self-esteem that is an inherent outcome of having been poor and, by extension, being denied respect and dignity.
The violence of heteronormative patriarchy also stands out. The women who are humiliated by Jonasi − Joyce, Mathipa, Essie and Lindani − do not initially see him as the source of their problems.
To watch The Polygamist as simply a scintillating story is to miss the important social and political questions that it poses to us about systemic issues.
Instead, they view one another as the problem and go on to humiliate and violate each other both physically and verbally. This is internalised misogyny. It occurs when women subconsciously absorb and apply sexist societal stereotypes to themselves and other women.
Because it is learned over a lifetime through socialisation rather than being an innate trait, women often unknowingly perpetuate patriarchal standards. Additionally, the series highlights the devaluing of motherhood and how it can be used to subjugate women.
Jonasi cheated on Joyce after she stopped being appealing to him post-partum. Mathipa also endured most of the abuse post-partum, including the absence of support and being officially replaced by someone younger.
This is not a plot in a series; it is a lived reality for many women who exist in a patriarchal society that demands perfection from them both in the productive and reproductive spaces and never get meaningfully rewarded for it.
The burden of disease on black communities also deserves mention. By disease, I don’t only mean the sexually transmitted infections that Jonasi spread to the women he was with, though this is a reminder of the burden of disease that women particularly endure.
Research shows that many black women, particularly in hyperendemic regions like SA, are affected by HIV/Aids. While married women in stable, monogamous unions statistically face lower HIV risks than unmarried women, many still become infected due to partner infidelity or high-risk behaviour.
The migrant labour system, specifically, created environments that foster high-risk sexual behaviours and increased disease transmission, with rural black women in particular being on the receiving end.
But the burden of disease I refer to is also that of mental illness. The impact of the dysfunction caused by Jonasi’s promiscuity is evidenced in the mental health struggles experienced not only by his wife and partners, but also by his children, one of whom goes on to mirror him.
To watch The Polygamist as simply a scintillating story is to miss the important social and political questions that it poses to us about systemic issues. And those questions, more than the entertainment, should be something we reflect on after the dramatic scenes have faded.
