African king: The story of ‘Shaka iLembe’ reveals a story that has been “underutilized in almost every way”

“At first I thought we were digging a deep hole for ourselves as people feel so passionately about this character,” says Angus Gibson, director and co-creator of South Africa’s biggest production of all time, Shaka iLembe.

The character in question is King Shaka, or ShakakaSenzangakhona, the most famous of the Zulu kings who ruled in the pre-colonial era. An extremely important figure in South African 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 production of the series was to correct this error.

Gibson, Desireé Markgraaff and Teboho Mahlatsi – the experienced trio behind Shaka iLembe Bomb production house! Productions – he knew the project would define his career. They wanted to tell a King Shaka story that South Africans considered their own and erase decades of pre-colonial history that they did not recognize.

“This story was deeply important to us because African history has been underutilized in almost every way,” says Markgraaff.“ There is very little television or film that explores the history of this rich and attractive continent – the cradle of humanity. Telling this story felt like the first step in helping to change that: creating something beautiful that Africans everywhere could connect with.”

The founders of Bomba! have built a reputation for creating films and TV shows that put an African lens on storytelling. Gibson co-directed the late Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-nominated biography of Nelson Mandela, Mandela: Son of Africa, Father of a NationTeboho made a short film that won the Silver Lion Portrait of a drowning young man and Markgraaff was co-producer of the award-winning docuseries Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. The trio also did Yizo Yizoa visceral and honest late 1990s drama series from the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), set in a Johannesburg city school. Still, facing Shaka would be an entirely different challenge.

Gibson recalls how the original idea was to first create a pre-colonial film or series, covering different narratives about largely obscure figures from across Africa. However, M-Net, the South African pay television 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 have been previous attempts to tell its story, or at least its role in the history of Western colonizers in Africa. The SABC, then owned by South Africa’s apartheid government, released Shaka Zulu in 1985, but told the story largely based on the writings of British traders who 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.

Outside the US, more recently, a $90 million Showtime series titled King Shakawho told Training day director Antoine Fuqua among its executive producers was fired before its release due to cost-cutting measures. Production in the province of KwaZulu-Natal was shut down 12 days early, a devastating blow to the South African creative community. His unexpected disappearance has made the MultiChoice show, which airs on M-Net’s Msanzi Magic channel, even more critical.

Consulting the king

Initial anxiety about facing Shaka coincided with the start of the pandemic. Having already spent several years in development, the global production freeze allowed for an even deeper period of research. Historians, scholars and family descendants, even the late Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, who gave his blessing, were consulted, and all available paintings and written sources were studied. This led to two results: a TV series that is far more historically accurate in terms of clothing, hairstyles, language, and political dynamics than anything that came before it, and the idea that Shaka iLembe it wouldn’t just be about the man himself, but about the people around him.

Once M-Net gave the green light to what is the biggest-budget production in the company’s history, Gibson decided to hire the two people he envisioned playing Shaka and her 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’ last film Assassin. “I had to go the audition route, but I knew who I wanted,” says Gibson. “That was non-negotiable in my mind.”

In addition to portraying the historical figure she always dreamed of playing, Mbatha came on board as an executive producer. “For me, it was important to be part of something that fully told the story of our beginnings,” she says. “Bomb! has always shown an understanding of the television landscape in South Africa and Africa in general. This was a period in history when we were kings, so how did we explore that and bring that to fruition? Both of my roles were daunting tasks, very labor intensive at the best of times.”

The choice was made to tell a story about Shaka’s rise to leader of the Zulu Kingdom and his eventual assassination, addressing the figures that would define his reign. Senzo Radebe has been cast as Shaka’s estranged father King Senzangakhona, with the likes of Thembinkosi Mthembu, Dawn Thandeka King and Sthandiwe Kgoroge playing other lead roles. NtandoZondi is young Shaka.

Season 1, which looks at Shaka’s journey to adulthood and Queen Nandi’s role in her rise, was released in June 2023 and immediately broke viewership records, with 3.6 million viewers in its first week – the highest number ever for a MultiChoice channel. The production created more than 8,000 jobs and attracted 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 over from MultiChoice – and in South Africa on Showmax, the streamer that is backed by NBCUniversal and Sky. MultiChoice called Shaka iLembe a “love letter” to the nature, wildlife and history of the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa.

Shaka iLembe set the record for most wins in the drama category at the South African Film and Television Awards in 2024, and season 2 quickly began filming, with 16,000 jobs created this time around, as Bomb! told the story of how Shaka consolidated his power in early 19th century Africa as the new king and began building one of the continent’s most powerful empires in the KwaNobamba region of what is now the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

After another hugely successful season ended on August 30 this year, Deadline revealed that MultiChoice has 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 the British colonists.

“In Season 1, Shaka has to win people over, in Season 2 he travels with them, and in Season 3 he gets in front of them,” says Gibson. “I want you to look back and recognize what a genius he was and recognize his flaws. He was certainly brutal and alienated people, but he was a visionary.”

“Tom Cruise’s marketing bible”

When we speak to Gibson and Mbatha via a Zoom call, they are filming a big set. Mbatha says the scale is “much, much larger” than before, adding: “The set feels completely new and really speaks to the testament of the vision coming to life.”

Extras and crew often show up on set on non-workdays, she says, as she describes how the leads feel a shared sense of story forming with the magnitude of their performances. Wearing a dazzling Zulu headdress known as isícholoused by married women to signify status, Mbatha laughs as she talks about the stars using “Tom Cruise’s marketing bible” to sell the show, “going to the malls, kissing the babies and hugging the mothers, and understanding the tangibility of it all.”

He adds that for the production and telling of African stories of this magnitude, this level of personal investment is vital, especially when compared to other recent projects about Africa. For example, “Black Panther It was an incredible project that left its mark, but given the African narrative, it’s not something we can really identify with,” she says of Marvel’s success. “Shaka iLembe It’s close to people.”

Gibson understands the matter. “We wanted to completely flip the lens and the recognizable world to be African, so when the colonists arrive in season three, they will be the exotic things, not the other way around,” he says.

He feels Shaka iLembe achieved these lofty goals? “I expected half the audience to love the project and half to think we had it all 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 expression of deep appreciation for the project and people feel they have seen a representation of their past that they can celebrate.”

Now it’s a question of how far this can go. Gibson recalls how executives at a major U.S. cable network loved seeing the show, but didn’t think a drama filmed almost entirely in the Zulu language would resonate with audiences. “We need some brave broadcasters there,” he says. “We have one here.”