Zimbabwe's ZBC Made a Shaka iLembe Knock-off - and Then Nyami Nyami Failed to Start its Broadcast Without Any Explanation

by Thinus Ferreira

There's absolutely no explanation from Zimbabwe's ZBC, that made a historical drama series that looks like a knock-off of South Africa's Shaka iLembe, and which ZBC then suddenly failed to start the broadcast of as it promised on 4 October with no explanation for its abrupt no-show.

Following two seasons of The Bomb Shelter Film Company's high-quality Shaka iLembe historical drama series on M-Net's Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) in South Africa, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) surprised by announcing Nyami Nyami, produced by the Savanna Trust.

When the first trailer was released in April, jaws dropped: Not just because it immediately drew comparisons as a historical fantasy Zimbabwean drama series that seems to emulate Shaka iLembe, but for what instantly looked like high production values.

Nyami Nyami's cinematic looks more akin to premium television and far removed from the third-rate programming that the ZBC is known for.

Nyami Nyami, directed by Joe Njagu, Charles Munganasa and Daniel Maposa, is described as a "mythological fantasy drama" rather than a strict historical drama, which Shaka iLembe is.

While it is set in a tribal, traditional environment that gives it a historical aesthetic, its core premise is built entirely around BaTonga folklore and mythology.

The plot revolves around Nyami Nyami, the legendary, serpent-like Zambezi River God. 

The series brings to life the spiritual beliefs of the Tonga people, exploring themes of community, conflict, and the powerful river deity, and was filmed in Binga and at the Victoria Falls.

The story and screenplay were developed by the acclaimed Zimbabwean playwright and author Raisedon Baya, with the cast including Eddie Sandifolo, David Mungombe, Brenda Muleya and Lawrence Munkuli.

Scripting and concept development took place in early 2025, with principal photography and active on-location filming beginning in mid to late 2025. 

Like with Shaka iLembe, the filmmakers worked closely with BaTonga elders to ensure that the preservation of oral histories, traditional garb, and language accents remained as authentic as possible.

Filming on Nyami Nyami wrapped in early 2026, followed by post-production.

While the exact budget for Nyami Nyami is not known, it is definitely one of the most financially ambitious projects in modern Zimbabwean television history. 

The drama series is a primary beneficiary of the Zimbabwean government's newly initiated $10 million local content production fund, which was started by the country's ministry of information to try and improve the ZBC's drama slate.

Nyami Nyami was supposed to start on Sunday 4 October on ZBC - in a TV timeslot that screams "prestige television". Only, it didn't.

On the morning of 4 October - the exact same day Nyami Nyami was scheduled to premiere at 21:00, ZBC suddenly announced that the show wouldn't start without giving any explanation - and nothing since.

"ZBC TV wishes to advise its valued viewers and stakeholders that the premiere of the much-anticipated new drama series Nyami Nyami on ZBC TV, which was scheduled for this Sunday, 4 October at 21:00, has been rescheduled to a later date to be advised. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused," the broadcaster said.

After the production team had spent months building massive hype, cancelling the broadcast literally hours before the premiere didn't just leave viewers frustrated and deflated - it damaged ZBC's reputation and whatever trust remained, further.

With nothing said since, the amateurish management within the broadcaster around the show's planned broadcast continues to grow.

Announcing a delay on the exact day of release usually implies that something went wrong very late in the process, rather than a planned strategic shift.

For Zimbabwe's state broadcaster, which is trying to prove that it can compete with higher regional broadcasters like South Africa's SABC and M-Net, the last-minute pull of Nyami Nyami raises fresh doubts about ZBC's operational reliability.

TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read from TVwithThinus - 12 January 2019.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:

■ Sherwin Bryce-Pease, the SABC's US and United Nations correspondent, based in New York, is in South Africa.
"At one point George Clooney leans over to me and says..." - Sherwin Bryce-Pease dish about his time as president of the United Nations Correspondents Association.

■ MultiChoice Nigeria again has to emphatically tell Nigerians that DStv won't operate a "pay-as-you-view' system in the West African country.
"We are not going to do it. Our contracts with our suppliers are on a month-to-month basis. The channels do not belong to MultiChoice."

■ The SABC in 2019 - New year, same problems.
Rebecca Sibanda, legal assistant at the Centre for Constitutional Rights, writes that Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, South Africa's latest minister of communications, has very little time to help turn this sinking ship around or the broadcaster may fail.

■ Seattle TV station fires video editor for doctoring footage of American president Donald Trump given a Cheetos-orange tint, a larger than normal head and his tongue hanging out.

■ Comedy Central (DStv 122) rolls out its first rebrand in 8 years.
No word yet from Viacom International Media Networks Africa (VIMN Africa) on when the new look from US-based studio Loyalkaspar will be seen in South Africa and Africa.

■ Penn Badgley who was Gossip Girl, wants people to stop lusting after his character in You on Netflix who is not just a stalker but a murderer.

■ The showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery seen on Netflix, on the upcoming second season shakeup.
The Spock viewers meet in season 2 is not there yet.

■ Simply bizarre: Why is The Orville, seen on FOX (DStv 125 / StarSat 131 / Cell C black 201) trolling viewers getting rid of its female security chief?
Just like when Tasha Yar left Star Trek The Next Generation abruptly and prematurely, Alara Kitan (Halston Sage) has left the Orville.
■ Is Alara (Halston Sage) gone permanently?

■ The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) dumps R. Kelly's music from its music playlists while in South Africa the SABC doesn't feel a need arose following the multiple allegations of rape and abuse of the singer.

■ The upcoming new docu-drama Valley of the Boom on National Geographic (DStv 181 / StarSat 221 / Cell C 262) about the rise of Silicon Valley, that like MARS has talking heads experts in-between dramatic story, is too jarring here, awkward, and disjointed in an off-putting fashion.

DAILY TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read from TVwithThinus - 18 September 2017.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read, and that you should too:

■ Robert Bianco is gone as TV critic of USA Today in America; and meanwhile in a MUST-READ, TV critic Gail Pennington is retiring from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after 23 years of covering television (PS: TV critics no longer take pictures with the talent.)

■ The upcoming new TV season from America is going to be basically trash, warns AdAge, "cobbled together from the contents of a junk drawer stuffed with reboots, spin-offs and formulaic mush".

■ Reports of the death of broadcast television are greatly exaggerated, to kinda quote Mark Twain says the boss of NBC in America.


■ An uninformed idiot who really should know better, is let loose to share his "impression" that TV audiences in South Africa and DStv audiences are "dwindling". Of course it's growing since DStv subscriptions are increasing (more South African homes have DStv than ever before) as are TV set sales, but as this person says "I have no evidence for this other than my own observations".


■ Technology companies are the new titans of television.
As TV, the internet and wireless technologies converge, it's spend, spend, spend for tech companies to create and own content.


■ As SuperSport spends a lot of money to hype its acquisition of WWE wrestling, Africa's DStv subscribers are very angry at SuperSport for its failure to show the Canelo Alvarez vs Gennady Golovkin boxing match outside of South Africa.
The rant-filled comments from angry DStv subscribers directed at SuperSport and MultiChoice below Edem Djokotoe's article are fascinating and revealing.


■ MultiChoice Botswana wins in court over Botswana's broadcasting regulator.
The Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (Bocra) demanded that MultiChoice Botswana submit its DStv price hike tariffs. MultiChoice Botswana won by showing that MultiChoice Africa is responsible for DStv tariff and DStv bouquets design and was granted the urgent court interdict to prevent Bocra from suspending its licence (and shutting MultiChoice Botswana down).
The case will be heard in October.

■ FOX that wants to take over Sky will be the British broadcasting regulator's hardest test ever.
Ofcom will have to decide whether the take-over will represent a "FOX News-ification" of Sky News (DStv 402), and also whether it will threaten and diminish media plurality.


■ The mess created by trash press, that creates an even bigger mess.
Long story short: So MultiChoice Nigeria keeps inviting moronic media to media briefings - dumb-dumbs who don't understand television, don't understand pay-TV, don't care to learn, report wildly incorrectly and end up inflicting reputational damage on DStv Nigeria, misinforms consumers and makes things worse.

- The latest trashination started when MultiChoice Nigeria had a media briefing to explain that DStv Nigeria subscribers actually benefit through bundling of content.
DStv explained that nowhere in Africa is pay-per-view (PPV) used and that DStv subscribers could watch the Floyd Mayweather/Connor MCGregor fight on SuperSport for instance where in America they would have had to pay much more for this single PPV event.

1. Lo and behold Nigerian trash-reporters literally reports that MultiChoice Nigeria is set to introduce "Pay-per-view".
2.Trash-bad copy-and-pasters ranging from IT News Africa to Telecompaper to several others, damage their credibility and make the misinformation worse by re-"reporting" without checking anything, that MultiChoice Nigeria is launching PPV.
3. MultiChoice Nigeria is forced to issue a new statement to deny that it's launching PPV - ironically what the original press briefing was supposed to spell out. MultiChoice Nigeria - without calling out the specific media trash that caused the mess, says MultiChoice has no pay-per-view plan.



■ The 69th Annual Prime Time Emmy Awards 2017 in America made history when The Handmaid's Tale became the first TV show by a streaming site (Hulu) to win the Emmy for best TV drama.

- Deadline analyses that the 2017 Emmy "had something for everyone". "Sleek and sincere," notes Variety but says there's still a long way to go.

- Women working in television in America are making strides, the audience stood up for those who really deserved it and there were memorable speeches, while Strange Things, The Crown, Feud and Westwold turned out to be duds.

 - It's also been disappointment for This Is Us seen on M-Net (DStv 101) that lost out on all its Emmys except for one (but the show is still great!). Why a lot of the stars wore blue ribbons on the red carpet.

- A lot of diverse winners at the 69th Annual Prime Time Emmy Awards 2017, the Emmy's best and worse moments, more snubs and surprises, how his Donald Trump overkill marred Stephen Colbert's hosting debut that included Sean Spicer's surprise appearance. Donald Trump basically got a key supporting role at the 2017 Emmys.

- How Saturday Night Live (SNL) got it right and won several Emmys in the "year of Trump". Netflix spends $6 billion per year on new content and Hulu ended up winning the big Emmy first.
And Entertainment Weekly chooses its 10 best moments.



■ Snapchat is against freedom of speech. Snapchat has agreed to a request from the Saudi Arabian government to block Al Jazeera (DStv 406 / StarSat 257) news articles and video on its Snapchat app in that country.

■ "The national broadcaster has to look for quality content as well as improve on other issues like presentation and the general programming format".
That's interestingly not being said of South Africa's inept, debt-riddled and struggling SABC although it's as applicable, but of Zimbabwe's propagandistic state broadcaster, ZBC in what Zimbabwe's The Sunday Mail describes as a "do-or-die moment".

Africa's 2014 FIFA World Cup TV rights drama: MultiChoice Africa on why it suddenly cut the continent's free-to-air (FTA) broadcasters.

MultiChoice Africa which has blacked out the TV signals of several free-to-air (FTA) public broadcasters on its DStv satellite pay-TV platform in several African countries from Zimbabwe to Namibia since the start of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, tells TV with Thinus that it must be done.

"SuperSport is the rights holder for the pay-TV platforms - both for satellite and digital terrestrial television (DTT) and hence 2014 World Cup games are available on the SuperSport channels on DStv and the SuperSport Select channels on GOtv," says MultiChoice Africa.

MultiChoice Africa pulled various TV channels like the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) from DStv at short notice although these broadcasters did secure the official rights to show the 64 matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup on their TV channels.

This made it impossible for DStv subscribers to watch the 2014 FIFA World Cup matches which started at the end of last week on these channels on DStv, with viewers in these countries who could only watch it on the terrestrial signals of these broadcasters.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in South Africa on DStv didn't go dark - the 2014 World Cup matches shown on SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 are broadcast on these channels although the SABC is also a (FTA) broadcaster and which acquired the FTA rights, similar to other African broadcasters which are blacked out.

Asked why this is the case, MultiChoice tells TV with Thinus that "South Africa is viewed differently by FIFA, as it is not a member of the AUB (Rest of Africa) and BON (Nigeria), where the FIFA agreements with those associations preclude carriage on pay-TV platforms that do not have rights".

"SuperSport has in fact taken a sub- licence from the SABC in South Africa alone, for 2014 FIFA World Cup. Therefore, SABC 2014 FIFA World Cup content may be carried by MultiChoice".

Meanwhile Africa's public broadcasters blacked-out on DStv were not happy. NBC's director-general Albertus Oachamub said in a television interview that MultiChoice Africa informed the broadcaster "just a couple of hours before we were to go live with our broadcast".

"It makes one wonder what the real reasons were, what the real motives are behind such a last minute announcement. We have had lots of run-ins in recent times with MultiChoice. Therefore I'm saying that a last minute announcement like that, makes one wonder if it is really, genuinely for the reasons in the letter that they have sent," said Albertus Oachamub.

MultiChoice Africa tells TV with Thinus that the rights are sold by FIFA in various packages to different platforms.

"Many of the FTA broadcasters in Africa, including ZBC and NBC bought the FTA rights packages - which means they have the rights to show matches on their FTA signal, whether on a FTA digital platform or on analogue".

"FIFA issued a directive that there would be a blanket ban on the broadcasting of FTA channels broadcasting matches licensed to FTA channels by pay-TV operators during the 2014 World Cup".

"As such MultiChoice was forced to comply with this directive and blocked out the games on the FTA channels".

"However MultiChoice went back and negotiated with FIFA and was granted a special reprieve lifting the restriction on the broadcasting of the matches on the FTA channels".

"Hence, all the games are now available on the DStv and GOtv platforms. MultiChoice is compelled to follow any conditions or directives in relation to broadcast rights that may be imposed by the rights owners," says MultiChoice Africa.