by Thinus Ferreira
After its contract completely ran out and production shuttered on Muvhango, the South African public broadcaster now plans to revive the Venda soap for SABC2 but as a cheaper show with some new faces similar to what SABC1 was forced to do with a reset of Generations - The Legacy.
Word of Mouth Pictures ended filming on SABC2's Venda weekday soap on 15 June and shuttered production at the end of season 25, which meant that it was effectively cancelled with no new signed contract from the SABC for the producers to continue making new episodes.
With the cast and crew no longer under contract and with some who have since found other work, TVwithThinus can reveal that the SABC will now bring Muvhango back for a 26th season but with some new faces, some "old" faces, and as a cheaper series.
Despite having lost millions of viewers over the past decade, the long-running Muvhango has remained SABC2's most-watched draw - as well as the struggling TV channel's only regular show that managed to lure more than a million viewers nightly.
In June, Muvhango topped SABC2's ratings with 1.16 million viewers as the 23rd most-watched strand of content on South African television last month.
Since 2 July with no further contract in place - or available and delivered original episodes at Auckland Park's playout centre - the SABC has been showing filler repeats of old Muvhango episodes in the soap's 21:00 timeslot.
The result was that SABC2 ratings immediately plunged as viewers switched away to other TV channels.
After Muvhango's exit following the cancellation of 7de Laan at the end of 2023, SABC2 this month had no original local primetime soap left that runs on the channel with new nightly episodes.
Insiders told me on Monday morning that the Tshivenda language drama is now being revived for another season.
Mmoni Seapolelo, SABC spokesperson, in response to a media query, on Monday night confirmed the move and said "SABC2 will make an announcement in due course regarding the new exciting season of Muvhango."
Thanduxolo Jindela, a spokesperson for Word of Mouth Pictures, didn't return calls and didn't respond to multiple requests for comment made on Monday about production restarting for Muvhango but according to insiders the revived show will "reboot with new faces".
A big question is whether Muvhango will be able to resolve and pay off the big season 25 cliffhanger that the final episode ended with, and if so how. In the final scene, the just-married characters of Kgosi and Reneilwe as well as wedding guests were gunned down by a sniper and collapsed in blood.
After the production derailment, the other option would be a hard reset for Muvhango, similar to how Mfundi Vundla's Morula Pictures (MMSV) restarted Generations - The Legacy a decade ago.
In late 2014 Mfundi Vundla fired the entire Generations main cast of 16 actors after they collectively demanded better pay and working conditions.
Two months after Generations went off the air and SABC1 ran out of episodes in October 2014, it returned as the rebranded Generations - The Legacy in December 2014 as "a series with an entirely new contract" and a new cast playing new characters.
On Monday the SABC was asked when it signed a new Muvhango contract and whether it is cheaper than before, for how many episodes it would be (season 25 ran for 130 episodes), what a reset and reinvention would allow the SABC to do, and if Muvhango will again run for five nights a week. The broadcaster declined to answer these questions.
Muvhango made its debut as the SABC's first Tshivenda language drama in April 1997 with one episode per week and grew to become a 5-day soap.
Over the past few years, insiders explained that the public broadcaster's precarious financial position has made it completely untenable to keep multiple big-budget shows with large ensemble casts all on the air, since they had become simply too expensive for the SABC which is technically insolvent and is struggling to fund content creation.
This has led to the ongoing pattern and demise over recent years of SABC soaps and shows like Isidingo, High Rollers, Top Billing, Pasella, The Estate and 7de Laan which all got cancelled.
