“At the beginning, I thought we were digging a deep hole for ourselves, as people feel so passionately about this character,” says Angus Gibson, the director and co-creator of South Africa’s biggest-ever production, Shaka iLembe.
The character in question is King Shaka, or ShakakaSenzangakhona, the most famous of the Zulu kings who ruled in a pre-colonial era. A hugely important figure in South Africa’s Zulu culture, he has often been portrayed in Western media as a brutal warlord, a contrast to the tough military and political leader that most scholars agree he was. The desire behind the making of the series was to right that wrong.
Gibson, Desireé Markgraaff and Teboho Mahlatsi — the experienced trio behind Shaka iLembe production house Bomb! Productions — knew the project would become career-defining. They wanted to tell a King Shaka story that South Africans felt was their own, and to wash away decades of pre-colonial history they didn’t recognize.
“This story was deeply important to us because African history has been underserved in almost every way,” says Markgraaff.“ There is very little television or film that explores the history of this rich and compelling continent — the very cradle of humankind. Telling this story felt like the first step in helping to change that: To create something beautiful that Africans everywhere could connect with.”
The founders of Bomb! have built a reputation for creating films and TV shows that placed an African eye on storytelling. Gibson co-directed the late Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-nominated Nelson Mandela biography, Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a Nation, Teboho made Silver Lion-winning short Portrait of a Young Man Drowning and Markgraaff was a co-producer on the multi-award-winning doc series Amandla!: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony. The trio also made Yizo Yizo, a visceral and honest late-1990s South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) drama series set in a Johannesburg township school. Still, taking on Shaka would be an entirely different challenge.
Gibson recalls how the original idea was to create a pre-colonial film or series first, covering different narratives about largely obscure figures from across Africa. However, M-Net, the South African pay-TV channel owned by African content giant MultiChoice, suggested focusing on the Zulu king — by far the most prominent historical figure from South Africa’s pre-colonial era.
There had been previous attempts to tell his story, or at least his part in the story of Western settlers in Africa. SABC, then owned by South Africa’s apartheid government, released Shaka Zulu back in 1985, but told the story largely based on the writings of British traders who had interacted with Shaka, and through flashbacks of Henry Francis Fynn, a settler with an important role in South African history who will appear in Season 3 of Shaka iLembe.
Out of the U.S. more recently, a $90 million Showtime series titled King Shaka, which counted Training Day director Antoine Fuqua among its executive producers, was canned before its release because of to cost-cutting measures. Production in the KwaZulu-Natal province shut down 12 days before wrap, a devastating blow for the South African creative community. Its unexpected demise made MultiChoice’s show, which airs on M-Net’s Msanzi Magic channel, even more critical.
Consulting the king
Initial trepidation about taking on Shaka coincided with the onset of the pandemic. Having already spent several years in development, the global production freeze allowed for an even deeper period of research. Historians, academics and family descendants, even the late Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, who gave his blessing, were consulted, and every painting and available written source was studied. That led to two outcomes: a TV series that is far more historically accurate in terms of clothing, hairstyles, language and political dynamics than anything before, and the idea that Shaka iLembe would not just be about the man himself, but the people around him.
Once M-Net had given the go-ahead for what is the biggest-budget production in the company’s history, Gibson moved to hire the two people he envisaged playing Shaka and his influential mother, Queen Nandi — relative newcomer Lemogang Tsipa and Nomzamo Mbatha, the actress and activist known internationally for roles in Coming 2 America and Bruce Willis’ final film Assassin. “I had to go down the route of auditions, but I knew who I wanted,” says Gibson. “That was a non-negotiable in my head.”
As well as portraying the one historical figure she’d always dreamed of playing, Mbatha boarded as an executive producer. “For me, it was important to be part of something that fully told the history of our beginnings,” she says. “Bomb! has always shown an understanding of the television landscape in South Africa, and Africa at large. This was a period of history when we were kings, so how did we explore that and flesh that out? Both of my roles were daunting tasks, very laborious in the best of ways.”
The choice was made to tell a story about Shaka’s rise to leader of the Zulu Kingdom and his eventual assassination, taking in the figures who would define his reign. Senzo Radebe was cast as Shaka’s estranged father, King Senzangakhona, with the likes of Thembinkosi Mthembu, Dawn Thandeka King and Sthandiwe Kgoroge playing other leads. NtandoZondi is the young Shaka.
Season 1, which looks at Shaka’s journey into manhood and Queen Nandi’s role in his rise, launched in June 2023 and immediately broke viewing records, with 3.6 million viewers in its first week — the most ever for a MultiChoice channel. The production created more than 8,000 jobs and drew more internet searches than any other TV show in South Africa that year.
Across the continent, Shaka iLembe played on Mzansi Magic and other local M-Net channels, in French-speaking territories on Canal+ — which has just taken control of MultiChoice — and in South Africa on Showmax, the streamer that has the backing of NBCUniversal and Sky. MultiChoice has called Shaka iLembe a “love letter” to South Africa’s nature, wildlife and the history of the KwaZulu-Natal region.
Shaka iLembe went on to set the record for most drama category wins at the South African Film and Television Awards in 2024, and Season 2 quickly began filming, with 16,000 jobs created this time, as Bomb! told the story of how Shaka consolidated his power in early 19th century Africa as the new king, and started building one of the continent’s most powerful empires in the KwaNobamba region of what is now KwaZulu-Natal province.
After another hugely successful run ended on August 30 this year, Deadline revealed that MultiChoice ordered a third and final season, which will air in 2026. The final season will explore Shaka’s enemies trying to undermine his rule and the arrival of Francis Fynn and British colonizers.
“In Season 1, Shaka has to win the people over, in the second season he is going on the journey with them, and in the third he gets ahead of them,” says Gibson. “I want you to look back on him and recognize what a genius he was, and to acknowledge his flaws. He certainly was brutal, and he alienated people, but he was a visionary.”
The “Tom Cruise bible of marketing”
When we speak with Gibson and Mbatha via a Zoom call, they’re filming a large set piece. Mbatha says the scale is “much, much bigger” than before, adding: “The set feels completely new and really speaks to the testament of the vision coming to life.”
Extras and crew often turn up to set on non-working days, she says, as she outlines how the leads feel a shared sense of history in the making with the magnitude of their performances. Wearing a stunning flared Zulu headdress known as an isicholo, worn by married women to signify status, Mbatha giggles as she talks about the stars using the “Tom Cruise bible of marketing” to sell the show, “going to malls, kissing the babies and hugging the mamas, and understanding the tangibility of it all.”
She adds that for African production and storytelling of this scope, this level of personal investment is vital, especially when compared with other recent projects about Africa. For example, “Black Panther was an incredible project that made its mark, but from the African narrative, it’s not something we can truly relate to,” she says of the Marvel hit. “Shaka iLembe has a closeness to the people.”
Gibson picks up on the point. “We wanted to completely reverse the lens and the recognizable world to be African, so when the settlers come in Season 3, they are the exotic things, not the other way around,” he says.
Does he feel Shaka iLembe has achieved those lofty goals? “I had the expectation of half an audience that loved the project and half that felt we’d got it entirely wrong and had no right to tell the story, but it has been extraordinarily affirming,” says Gibson. “In the context of Africa, there is an outpouring of deep appreciation of the project and people feeling they’ve seen a representation of their past they can celebrate.”
Now it’s a case of how far it can go. Gibson recalls how execs at one major U.S. cable network loved a screener of the show but didn’t think a drama shot almost entirely in the Zulu language could resonate with the audience. “We need some courageous broadcasters over there,” he says. “We’ve got one here.”
The post African King: The Story Of ‘Shaka iLembe’ Reveals A History That’s Been “Underserved In Almost Every Way” appeared first on Deadline.
