i 
 
 
 
University of The Witwatersrand 
School of the Arts 
Research Report 
 
 
TITLE: 
 
Multiple Concurrent Partnerships: An analysis of the 
representations of male sexual behaviour in the 
“Soul City OneLove” television series. 
 
 
 
 
Submitted by Gillian Glauber 
 
Student Number: 8603969W 
 
For the degree of Masters in Film & Television by coursework 
and research report 
 
 
 
Supervised by Dr. Haseenah Ebrahim 
October 2011 
ii 
 
 
 
 DECLARATION  
 
I declare that this report is my own unaided work. It is being submitted in fulfilment of 
the degree of Master of Arts in Film & Television by coursework and research report 
to the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted 
before for any degree or examination to any other University.  
 
 
__________________ 
Gillian Glauber  
 
 
on this the  ........day of ......October........2011  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
iii 
 
 
Abstract  
In developing countries, such as South Africa, the HIV infection rate is an 
issue that can be addressed through the mass media by encouraging  
behaviour change particularly in terms of male sexual behaviour and more 
specifically with regard to multiple concurrent partnerships.  One of the most 
powerful ways to motivate behaviour change on a large scale is through 
broadcast television. Soap operas or televised dramas have been used to 
encourage behaviour change for over 3 decades and in the 1970’s Mexican 
television producer Miguel Sabido formulated a theoretical framework for the 
design and implementation of effective soap operas for social change. This 
research report uses Sabido’s theoretical framework to analyse one series of 
Soul City which aims to encourage men to reject multiple concurrent 
partnerships and remain sexually faithful to one partner at a time. The practical 
film component explores how televised messages are received and 
demonstrates how even highly targeted behaviour change messages can be 
lost in the sea of information that a media consumer is faced with daily. The 
film also looks at images of masculinity as consumed by a young television 
viewer. This report and the practical film component find that while the Soul 
City OneLove series fulfils some of the criteria described by Sabido for 
effective behaviour change television, it fails to deliver the messages in an 
appropriately entertaining way, and when received in context these messages 
may possibly not be understood or appropriated by viewers. 
 
iv 
 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
ABSTRACT III 
TABLE OF CONTENTS IV 
LIST OF TABLES VI 
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS VII 
1. CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTION & LITERATURE REVIEW 8 
1.1. Rationale 8 
1.2. Definition of entertainment- education 9 
1.3. Why Miguel Sabido? 10 
1.4. Reception theories and the film XY 11 
1.5. Images of African Maleness 12 
2. CHAPTER TWO - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK & METHODOLOGY 16 
2.1. Successful behaviour change television – the Mexican model 16 
2.2. Genre and characters – Bentley’s Dramatic Theory and Bandura’s Social 
Learning Theory 20 
2.3. The need for Behaviour Change and the role of television 23 
2.4. Culture and Cultural studies 23 
3. CHAPTER THREE - ANALYSIS OF SOUL CITY ONELOVE 28 
v 
 
4. CHAPTER FOUR – AUDIENCE RECEPTION THEORIES, AFRICAN 
MASCULINITY AND THE FILM XY 37 
4.1. Audience reception theories and cultural studies 37 
4.2. Images of Masculinity 39 
4.3. Multiplicity of readings and possible action 42 
5. CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS 47 
6. APPENDIX A - LIST OF CHARACTERS IN SOUL CITY ONELOVE 53 
7. APPENDIX B – ANALYSIS TABLE OF SOUL CITY ONELOVE 54 
8. REFERENCES 63 
 
 
vi 
 
List of Tables 
 
Table 1: Sabido theories and functions .................................................................... 19 
Table 2: Analysis of Episodes 1 to 6 ........................................................................ 54 
Table 3: Analysis of Episodes 7 to 13 ...................................................................... 59 
 
 
 
 
vii 
 
List of Abbreviations 
 
 
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome 
ARV Anti Retroviral Treatment 
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus 
MCP Multiple Concurrent Partnerships 
USAID United States Agency for International Development 
 
 
 
8 
 
1. CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTION & LITERATURE REVIEW 
 
This research report aims firstly to investigate the role of entertainment education in 
delivering social messages, particularly as related to sexual behaviour in males and 
especially with regard to multiple concurrent partners, through an examination of one 
season of the television series Soul City and secondly, to look at the social context in 
which such messages are received, and to produce a film that explores both these 
aims. 
 
1.1. Rationale 
 
Research by donor organisations John Hopkins and The United States Agency for 
International Development (USAID) points to Multiple Concurrent Partnerships 
(MCPs) as being at the root of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infections in 
Southern Africa, (Halperin & Epstein, 2004, cited in Shelton, 2009). The reasons why 
people conduct such sexual relationships in a time of HIV are many, with economic 
reasons being a predominant factor for women (Shelton, 2004) and cultural factors 
pertaining to ideas of masculinity affecting male behaviour (Silberschmidt, 2005). 
The rate at which infections spread through sexual networks is so great that James 
D Shelton, Bureau for Global Health at the United States Agency for International 
Development (USAID), a donor body that funds many HIV campaigns in Africa, has 
identified MCP‟s as the root cause of continual infections and motivates for informed 
behaviour change (Shelton, 2009, p.367). 
 
HIV is an incurable, yet preventable disease. In order to prevent new infections, 
behaviour change on a large scale is required. Media can be used to persuade 
viewers to adopt certain values or to change behaviour and, in South Africa 
specifically, the Soul City Institute exists to do exactly that. As founder, Dr Garth 
Japhet, says in an interview: 
 
 “Even though a lot of the problems we ...met with...were rooted in people‟s 
socio-political and financial situations, it was clear to us that people could be 
empowered to make better choices and change attitudes and behaviour if they 
9 
 
received some training. The media could be used to inform people of the 
reasons for the grave health situation” (Japhet, 1999, cited by Tufte).  
 
This report will examine the approach taken by the Soul City Institute in addressing 
one aspect of HIV/AIDS prevention – that of male sexual behaviour, specifically 
Multiple Concurrent Partnerships and the messages conveyed in the Soul City 
OneLove television drama series campaign about male sexual behaviour. For the 
purposes of this research there are three main areas of scholarship I am drawing on, 
namely, entertainment-education, cultural studies and images of African masculinity. 
 
1.2. Definition of entertainment- education 
 
Entertainment-education soap operas have also been called “pro-development” soap 
operas, a worldwide growing body of works that use entertainment media for 
educational purposes. In her book entitled Soap Operas for Social Change: Toward 
a Methodology for Entertainment-Education Television, Heidi Nariman defines 
Entertainment as “...a performance of spectacle that captures the interest or 
attention of an individual, giving pleasure, amusement or some form of gratification”. 
Education is defined as “ ...a formal or informal program of instruction and training 
that has the potential to develop an individual‟s skill to achieve a particular end by 
boosting his or her mental, moral, or physical powers.” (Nariman, 1993, p.2). “An 
entertainment-education soap opera is a melodramatic serial that is broadcast in 
order to both entertain and convey subtly an educational theme to promote some 
aspect of development” (Nariman, 1993, p.2). 
 
I have chosen the OneLove campaign, Soul City Series 9, broadcast between 
January and March 2009, because it sets out clear aims to change people‟s sexual 
behaviour, particularly with regard to having multiple concurrent partners. In this 
case, the end is to discourage men from having more than one simultaneous sexual 
partner and a second, but as important aim, is to encourage people to always use 
condoms when having sex. 
 
10 
 
While research from Soul City and the AIDSTAR (the USAID website) continues to 
point to MCP‟s and male attitudes towards women and sex as the most important 
factors to target in the fight against HIV infections, recent statistics report that in Sub-
Saharan Africa, young people are indeed changing their behaviour, considering HIV 
as an ever present threat, and making sexual behaviour choices accordingly. 
(Reuters Health, 2010). Glaringly missing from the list of such countries is South 
Africa.  
 
1.3. Why Miguel Sabido? 
 
In the early 1970‟s, a Mexican television producer, Miguel Sabido, formalized his 
model for researching, scripting and producing soap operas with a strong pro-social 
message (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, pp.47 – 57). Using five widely accepted dramatic 
and psychological theories, Sabido developed a theoretical model for the production 
of educational television drama that would prove to be effective in changing 
behaviour for the better, while also hugely popular and, therefore, economically 
viable.  “Miguel Sabido‟s  education – entertainment strategy represents one form of 
complying with the demands of the television industry (money) while still attempting 
to harness the medium‟s educational capacity to achieve pro-social objectives” 
(Nariman, 1993, p.xxi).  
 
Miguel Sabido‟s television series proved to be both economically viable and a major 
cause of behaviour change among the population with regard to adult literacy habits, 
family planning and gender awareness. Unfortunately, Sabido‟s own publications on 
his model are not available in English, and cannot be accessed as the primary texts 
for this study, but Singhal & Rogers (1999) & Nariman (1993) have analysed and 
assessed this model in substantial detail and will be used as key sources for this 
study. In the foreword to Heidi Nariman‟s book “Soap opera for social change” 
(1993), Everett M. Rogers, one of the foremost writers on entertainment-education 
and behaviour change, describes Miguel Sabido as “....an original and creative mind 
(that has) created and perfected a brilliant idea that provides an opportunity to 
change the world in beneficial directions” (Rogers in Nariman, 1993, p.xiv). Nariman 
herself goes on to describe the real changes experienced in Mexico during and after 
11 
 
the broadcast of Sabido‟s telenovelas as the ultimate model in television for social 
change. “The Mexican experience with entertainment-education soap operas forms a 
kind of benchmark among the educational programming that has been broadcast 
worldwide throughout television‟s relatively short history” (Nariman, 1993, p.xxi). 
Sabido‟s model went on to be used in many developing countries, including India, 
Kenya, Turkey and Egypt. So it seems appropriate that in analysing Soul City, we 
can use the Mexican framework as a guideline against which to measure the 
elements of Series 9, the OneLove campaign, in order to discover whether the 
elements identified by Miguel Sabido as necessary to achieving maximum 
effectiveness in terms of behaviour change, are indeed present and recognisable.  
 
The OneLove campaign fits Miguel Sabido‟s strategy for social change television in 
that it aims to reward positive behaviour, punish negative behaviours, set up 
confrontations between good and evil, show consequences for various behaviours 
and ultimately encourages viewers to examine their own beliefs and value systems 
in order to change in some way (Singhal & Rogers, 1999). The analysis will indicate 
whether indeed it succeeded in these aims. Sabido‟s model, and its theoretical 
underpinnings, will be discussed in chapter two in order to contextualise the analysis 
that follows of Soul City OneLove. 
 
1.4. Reception theories and the film XY 
 
The body of work on reception theory emphasizes the reader or viewer‟s reception of 
a text as well as the producer‟s intention (Morley 1992, Fiske 1978 and 1987, 
Livingstone 1998, Curran 2006). Reception theories emphasise the necessity of 
looking at the socio-cultural context in which the messages are received, as well as 
the cultural background of audience members; as such it becomes an important 
element in considering the effectiveness of messages encoded within entertainment-
education media texts, and for the purpose of this study, in order to interrogate Soul 
City’s campaign properly. This research will begin with an analysis of the messaging 
encoded into the Soul City OneLove campaign, using Sabido‟s theoretical framework 
to analyse the content, before discussing questions relating to the reception of the 
12 
 
programmes, and the various possible social and reception contexts of the audience 
which are addressed in the practical film component.  
 
The aim of the film component of this study, i.e. the film XY, is to show that social 
communication messages may be produced in isolation and developed extensively 
as single individual projects but are consumed amongst many other messages by 
the average visually literate middle class South African urban youth. The film shows 
the variety of messages pertaining to what constitutes “manhood” and socially 
accepted male sexual behaviour that are received and consumed by a young South 
Africa male over a weekend while at home with his older brother. This is discussed 
further in chapter four. 
 
1.5. Images of African Maleness 
 
In her chapter in the book African Masculinities, Lindsay Clowes (2005) examines 
images of African men in DRUM magazine between the years 1951 to 1965. Clowes 
identifies a strong shift in the representation of maleness from a family-based, 
domestically defined role of father, provider, carer and husband to a more 
independent, individual, image of men at work, i.e. images that removed the women 
and children and presented the impression that manhood is situated in individual 
behaviour, freedom and wealth and not intrinsically tied to the domestic situation. 
The reasons for this shift in portrayals of masculinity can be variously attributed to 
the effects of apartheid on black South African men‟s sense of authority and 
freedom, independence and the global changes of the 1960‟s in which the post-war 
domestic scenes were derided as old fashioned, out of touch, restricting, limiting and 
backward. In the same era a new sexuality emerged – that of promiscuity and casual 
sex. As Clowes points out, one of the results of the sexual revolution of the 1960‟s 
was an increase in sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. 
(Clowes, 2005). By the 1980‟s Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) had 
emerged as a fatal response to sexual promiscuity. The Soul City representation of 
what constitutes a good man is somehow returning to those Drum magazine articles 
of the 1950‟s (Clowes, 2005, p.92 - 98). Soul City could therefore be identified as the 
13 
 
start of new representations of socially acceptable male behaviour in a time of HIV 
and AIDS. 
 
In Africa, women are more often seen as the oppressed partner in a heterosexual 
relationship. However, anthropologists such as Margarethe Silberschmidt (2005) 
provide us with fresh insight into the disempowered state of many African men. In 
her chapter entitled “Poverty, Male Disempowerment, and Sexuality”, Silberschmidt 
(2005), gives an historical overview of African men and their work (and increasing 
lack of work) and how that impacts upon their sense of masculinity and is played out 
in their sexual behaviour. Silberschmidt provides a historical and cultural overview of 
the shifts in gender roles as a result of factors such as colonisation, migrancy and 
global effects (war). She ends with the observation that “...structurally subordinated 
women have actively responded to the new situation. They have created a new 
social role for themselves. Both men and women agree that “more and more women 
have taken command of the home” and “harmony has gone out the window”. Thus 
gender antagonism and domestic violence have escalated” (Silberschmidt, 2005, 
p.193). 
 
Silberschmidt‟s work provides the film XY with a social framework for analysing 
African masculinities in post colonial South Africa, and looking at the roles and 
activities that African men feel are necessary for true manhood. In the film both 
young males are attempting to find an appropriate identity as a man. The younger 
boy tries to find this identity through television programmes and the older boy tries to 
find his identity as a man through his many sexual encounters. In both Soul City and 
the film XY, multiple sexual partners feature as one way of regaining a sense of 
power, or at least comfort. Silberschmidt's research led her to conclude that “a man‟s 
need for sexual extra-marital partners is urgent “when a man has lost control over his 
household and is humiliated by his wife”....Then “he needs peace on his mind.” 
(Silberschmidt, 2005, p.197).  
 
In his article entitled Cultural Politics and Masculinities: Multiple partners in Historical 
Perspective in KwaZulu-Natal, Mark Hunter (2005) offers some insight into traditional 
African practice of multiple sexual partners as way of explaining how masculine roles 
14 
 
and responsibilities shift. Hunter plots the rise and fall of the Zulu isoka, the man with 
many wives, who was markedly different from an isoka lamanyala, or dirty isoka, a 
dog or loose man, who slept with women he could not marry. Isoka was part of Zulu 
tradition in that it naturally led to a larger homestead, more children and more wealth, 
all admired as being masculine, as an umnumzana, or patriarch (Hunter, 2005, 
pp.390 - 391). 
 
The shift in gender roles in Kenya as noted by Margarethe Silberschmidt was also 
evident in South Africa in KwaZulu-Natal where Hunter carried out his research. 
Christianity, colonisation, migrancy and the loss of the farm or homestead are all 
factors that affected male sexual behaviour. Sexually transmitted diseases have 
always been a challenge to those with multiple partners and HIV is merely the latest 
in a line of difficult to treat and uncomfortable Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD‟s) 
(Hunter, 2005, pp.395-398). In the introduction to their book on African masculinities, 
Robert Morrell and Lahoucine Ouzgane describe their attempts to address the 
factors that contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS, in particular gender inequalities, 
violence and sexuality (Morrell & Ouzgane, 2005, p.13). The way they hope to do 
this is by finding new male identities. “In order to reduce the transmission rates of 
HIV/AIDS, many prevention initiatives have begun to work with young men in an 
attempt to reshape masculinity” (Morrell & Ouzgane, 2005, p.13).  Clowes (2005), 
Hunter (2005) and Silberschmidt (2005) all agree that African masculine roles are 
shifting, and that there is often a longing for simpler times (such as the 1950‟s) when 
men were depicted as domesticated beings, fathers and protectors. This image is 
not far from the much older Zulu concept of umnumzana, or homesteader and 
patriarch, and cannot be easily written off entirely as a product of white colonialism 
(Hunter, 2005, p.313).  
 
The film XY explores this search for a new social role through the eyes of a young 
boy. The boy is presented as being cut off from any social ties, including ancestral 
heritage. He exists purely as a consumer of media through his television set. His 
only living male role model is his older brother, who has a stream of girlfriends, all 
looking the same. Over a weekend, the film examines the messages this boy 
receives and proposes that given that he has no guiding force in his life, how will he 
15 
 
decide on which of the many messages to follow, if any? The film poses questions 
such as “How will he relate to women, and will he be capable of a meaningful, 
monogamous relationship with a woman given the images he consumes over this 
weekend?” and “What is there in his life to suggest to him that fidelity to one woman 
is a superior way to live as a male partner?” The images he sees are of men that are 
aggressive, violent, and sexual beings. Interspersed he sees images of men who are 
conflicted and undecided. The absence of a father figure is echoed in the Hamlet 
that he watches; the absence of male guidance is represented by his ancestor, a 
migrant worker who appears to him in his dreams and who needs to be introduced 
properly to his grandchild in order to act as his ancestral guide and helper. In all 
respects he is at a continual crossroads in life, unable to choose a path to follow.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
16 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2. CHAPTER TWO - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK & 
METHODOLOGY 
 
This research draws on the theoretical and empirical scholarship in the areas of 
entertainment-education as a model for behaviour change programming, notions of 
African masculinity and cultural studies and reception theories. 
 
My analysis takes as its starting point the theoretical framework of soap operas for 
social change as developed by television and theatre writer-producer-director Miguel 
Sabido in Mexico in the 1970's (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, pp.47 – 57). Through 
experience gained working in the theatre, Sabido developed a strategic framework 
for the production of soap operas for social change that combined various existing 
dramatic and psychological theories (Miguel Sabido in an interview with Singhal and 
Obregon, 1999, pp. 68 – 74). Using Sabido‟s theoretical framework for production of 
soap operas that encourage behaviour change I will analyse Soul City OneLove in 
order to see how closely the text appears to have followed the framework. 
 
2.1. Successful behaviour change television – the Mexican model 
 
In 1974 Mexican television producer Miguel Sabido used the unexpected success of 
a telenovela (or soap opera) with an educational bent called “Simplemente Maria” to 
springboard research into the theory of successful entertainment television with an 
educational message (Singhal & Rogers, 1999). Sabido conducted research into the 
popularity of his programmes, and gradually moved towards producing soap operas, 
or telenovelas, which aimed to capitalise on the three strongest drivers of audiences 
to soap operas, namely the emotional release received through the journeys of the 
17 
 
characters, fantasy fulfilment or escapism and the seeking of information and advice 
from their favourite characters (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, p.59). Not only did Sabido 
produce highly entertaining and effective entertainment-education, he also 
developed a theoretical framework for the production of such material that can be 
applied anywhere in the world. In South Africa, the Soul City Institute grew out of the 
entertainment-education model with what is described by Soul City founder Garth 
Japhet as the “edutainment vehicle” (Japhet, 1999, cited in Tufte, 2001, p.4). 
 
Entertainment – education is defined as “the process of purposively designing and 
implementing a media message both to entertain and educate, in order to increase 
audience members‟ knowledge about an educational issue, create favourable 
attitudes, and change overt behaviour (Singhal & Rogers 1999, p.9). Miguel Sabido 
developed a strategy for producing effective entertainment-education, by developing 
a theoretical framework for designing a soap opera that conveys an educational 
message using a combination of various social science theories, beginning with an 
adaptation of Claude E Shannon‟s five basic elements of communication by 
Rovigatti. Rovigatti’s circular model of Communication rearranged the model 
from a linear to a circular communication model. Sabido believed the linear model 
was insufficient and that a layered, interactive model was appropriate for telenovela 
audiences (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, p.62). 
 
His work in theatre led Sabido to lean strongly on genre and particularly Columbia 
University professor Eric Bentley’s Dramatic theory. Sabido used Bentley‟s 
descriptions of the five key theatre genres (tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, farce and 
melodrama) to build the plots and characters of his telenovelas in a way that would 
maximise the effect on the audience. Melodrama in particular was appropriated by 
Sabido as a most effective genre for behaviour change media. (Singhal & Rogers, 
1999, p.62). James Smith in his book on melodrama defines the genre as one which 
“Characteristically....presses its own extreme conflicts to extreme conclusions” 
(Smith, 1973, p.8) 
 
A third aspect of Sabido‟s dramatic framework developed from Carl Jung’s theory 
of the unconscious. Jung‟s theory of a “collective unconscious” populated by 
18 
 
archetypes and stereotypes inspired Sabido to create characters who themselves 
represented these archetypes – those who imitate a myth, and stereotypes –those 
who imitate life (Jung, 1954, 1964 and 1971). The collective unconscious is the site 
of religious beliefs and ancient world views that influences a group of people without 
their being aware of it. The images of this unconscious are “...deposits of thousands 
of years of experience of the struggle for existence and for adaptation” (Jung, 1971, 
pp.220-221). 
 
An important key to character and story development in Sabido‟s soap operas was 
based on Albert Bandura’s Social learning theory. Sabido used Bandura‟s social 
learning theory to design a grid by which characters could model behaviours that 
were punished or rewarded according to the desired behaviour required by the social 
messaging (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, pp.65-68 and Sabido in conversation with 
Singhal & Obregon, 1999, pp.69-74). 
 
A less widely known theory that informs Sabido‟s framework is Paul MacLean’s 
theory of the triune Brain. Maclean‟s theory posits that new areas of the brain have 
developed over the years of human evolution. As a result, we have the oldest, 
reptilian, part of the brain, which governs instinctual impulses such as sexual 
titillation, repulsion, disgust and horror, the second oldest part which governs 
emotional behaviour and the most recently developed site where thinking occurs and 
information is processed. (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, p.68 – 70). Sabido adopted this 
theory because of his belief that in order to change behaviour people must be 
stimulated instinctively, emotionally and intellectually to do so (Sabido in Singhal & 
Obregon, 1999, pp.72-73). His television producing experience led him to believe 
that the vast majority of educational programming is strictly informational and 
delivers messages that stimulate only the thinking part of the brain. However, if one 
wishes to change behaviour one needs to also stimulate responses that are 
emotional and instinctive in order to jolt the viewer to put the information into practice 
in their lives.  
 
Sabido posits that a combination of these theories, when applied to soap opera 
production, results in programming that delivers messages on many levels, provides 
19 
 
role models that satisfy aspirational needs and desires, as well as allows for 
emotional outlets, and stimulates key areas of the viewer‟s brain is such a way that 
learning and retaining of information is maximised, and behaviour is changed 
(Singhal & Rogers, 1999 and Nariman, 1993).  
 
In order to better understand why Sabido used these particular theories, a brief 
explanation of each and how they relate to social learning and subsequent behaviour 
change is necessary. Sabido worked extensively in theatre before starting a career 
in television and was influenced by the use of age-old storylines and characters used 
by indigenous Mexicans when producing local theatre. He experimented with the 
effects on the audience when he tweaked music, sets, props and pacing, and he 
made copious notes of his observations during these subtle shifts and changes. He 
decided to apply his findings to television production because he witnessed the 
effects mass media had on the public from soap operas he worked on. Sabido then 
actively sought to distil all the information he had gathered into a foundation for the 
production of television programming that would “activate specific socially desirable 
attitudes and behaviours” (Nariman, 1993, p.28). 
 
Broadly speaking the function of each theory can be described as follows in a table 
designed by Heidi Nariman (Table 1).  
 
Table 1: Sabido theories and functions 
THEORY FUNCTION IN ENTERTAINMENT-EDUCATION 
SOAP OPERA 
Dramatic Theory (Bentley) Provides a model for characters, their inter-
relationships, and plot construction 
Archetypes and 
Stereotypes (Jung) 
Provides a model for characters which embody 
universal human psychological energies 
Social Learning Theory 
(Bandura) 
Provides a model in which learning from soap opera 
characters can take place 
Concept of the Triune Brain 
(MacLean) 
Provides a model for sending complete messages 
which communicate with various centres of perception 
 
20 
 
2.2. Genre and characters – Bentley’s Dramatic Theory and Bandura’s Social 
Learning Theory 
 
“Where novel forms of behaviour can be conveyed only by social cues, modelling is 
an indispensable aspect of learning ... under most circumstances, a good example is 
therefore a much better teacher than the consequences of unguided actions.” 
(Bandura, 1971, p.5).  
 
Television, by its very nature, models behaviour in everything it broadcasts. Sabido 
was well aware of Albert Bandura‟s emphasis on the need to guide the observer‟s 
attention during the modelling process because “...simply exposing persons to 
models does not in itself ensure that they will attend closely to them...” (Bandura, 
1971) Thus, it is important to look at the ways that learning takes place via 
modelling. Bandura outlined three ways, namely attentional, retentive and 
reinforcement processes:  
 Attentional processes are “associational preferences” in which one recognises 
oneself or people one usually associates with. This can also be achieved by using 
models who possess “interesting and winsome qualities” whereas those who “lack 
pleasing characteristics” are rejected (Bandura, 1971, p.7).  
For successful retention processes to occur one must be able to recreate the 
behaviour when the model no longer exists to guide and so “the response patterns 
must be represented in memory in symbolic form” (Bandura, 1971, p.7). A strong 
symbol in television soap operas is the characters‟ name, and Sabido worked on the 
premise that soap opera could present relatively enduring, retrievable images of 
modelled sequences of desired (or undesired) behaviour through the names of the 
characters.  
 
Reinforcement and motivational learning processes are such that “A person can 
acquire, retain, and possess the capabilities for skilful execution of modelled 
behaviour, but the learning may rarely be activated into overt performance if it is 
negatively sanctioned or otherwise unfavourably received” (Bandura, 1971, p.8). It 
therefore becomes necessary to reward and punish in order to guide behaviour 
change. Positive incentives or rewards prompt observational learning to translate 
21 
 
into behaviour change. Bandura summarises “a model who repeatedly demonstrates 
desired responses, instructs others to reproduce them, physically prompts the 
behaviour when it fails to occur, and then administers powerful rewards will 
eventually elicit matching responses in most people” (Bandura, 1971, p.8). 
 
Eric Bentley‟s theatre work deals with five key genres of theatre and their effects on 
the audience. Sabido, with his own practice of noting the impact of various elements 
on the audience would have been naturally drawn to the dramatic theory 
underpinning such effect. Bentley lists tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, farce and 
melodrama as the main genres of theatrical storytelling. Sabido was strongly drawn 
to melodrama as the closest genre to television soap operas, and this was the one 
genre Bentley believed was closest to reality (Nariman, 1993, p.35), or as James 
Smith explains, “... melodrama is the dramatic form which expresses the reality of 
the human condition as we all experience it most of the time” (Smith, 1973, p.11). 
 
Sabido-style soap operas are not pure melodramas in the strict sense of the word, 
but are strongly coloured by aspects of melodrama in setting the world of the 
characters and narrative outcomes, particularly for the heroes. The setting for a 
Sabido-esque drama series is a world in which the moral universes of good and evil 
are in discord, and the audience is swept up in the struggle of the forces of good 
over the forces of evil. The melodramatic plots are “rational constructions of extreme 
situations” (Nariman, 1993, p.35) which place pressure on the characters to force 
issues of right and wrong. “We enjoy triumph without considering its cost to others, 
despair without seeking for alternative courses.....In melodrama we win or lose 
(Smith, 1973, p.10). The premise of OneLove, that of a man whose sleeping around 
inadvertently infects his own son with the HI virus, could be seen to be melodramatic 
in that the central character ultimately loses everything, even though the extent to 
which the characters struggle with good and evil are not. 
 
The issue of value judgements – what is right and what is wrong, what is good and 
what is evil - is intrinsic to both melodrama and traditional development 
communication. Both genres propose a “right “way to do things even if they do not 
always show the wrong way. In melodrama we can “...enter wholeheartedly into a 
22 
 
struggle against manifest injustice” (Smith, 1973, p.10). Sabido however changed 
this when he designed his theoretical framework to include punishments, villains and 
evildoing – elements long used in commercial soap operas but hitherto not seen in 
development communication. (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, pp. 65-69). 
 
In terms of Sabido‟s model of entertainment-education, characters that align their 
behaviour to the desired new behaviour are seen as “forces of good” and characters 
that refuse to adapt to the new behaviour are „forces of evil”. This clear division 
allows us to examine the characters according to Albert Bandura‟s theory of Social 
Learning in which television role models are said to be a strong and powerful force in 
teaching new, better or correct behaviours, as long as the “good” behaviour is 
rewarded and the “bad” behaviour punished in the narrative. (Nariman, 1993, pp.30 - 
31).  
 
Sabido determined that three types of characters are fundamental to successful 
modelling by audience members. The first two types of characters are positive and 
negative role models. They embody positive and negative behaviours concerning the 
social issues addressed in the serial drama (and are based on Jung‟s theory of 
archetypes and stereotypes, described below). These characters are repeatedly 
rewarded or punished for their behaviours. The consequences of these positive or 
negative behaviours must be directly linked to the behaviour in question: for 
example, a truck driver character that is practicing at-risk sexual behaviour should 
suffer from a sexually transmitted infection or even contract HIV, but should not be 
the victim of a traffic accident. The third type of character is the “transitional 
character.” The transitional characters are neither positive nor negative but 
somewhere in the middle and they play a pivotal role in a Sabido-style serial drama 
where they are designed to represent members of the target audience. The 
transitional characters‟ evolution toward the desired behaviour is that which the 
audience members will use to model their own behaviour change. 
 
For the purposes of this report the research into Soul City OneLove will focus mainly 
on the male characters and their stories. Excluded in this analysis is Sabido‟s use of 
Rogavatti‟s circular communication model, as research into how the Soul City 
23 
 
Institute uses audience feedback to inform programming is beyond the scope of this 
paper; the text analysed is the one broadcast. 
 
Culture has as much an impact on the reception of televised messages as the 
method of creating that message or the communication of it. In a popular medium 
such as television, if proper attention is paid to audience surveys and impact 
evaluations, it becomes apparent that the “people” or viewers, and their experiences, 
shape the messages through a circular mode of communication by which the 
viewer‟s responses shape the future messaging. Rico Lie and Jan Servaes (2000, 
p.308) state that “...it is through communication that culture is made public and 
shared; it is through culture that the forms of communication are shaped”. 
 
2.3. The need for Behaviour Change and the role of television 
 
Arvind Singhal and Everett Rogers summarise the case for the validity and even 
necessity of educational broadcasting as a response to global “developmental 
problems” including “... ethnic conflicts, environmental catastrophes, infectious 
diseases, hunger and famine, and unsupported population growth” (Singhal & 
Rogers, 1999, p.8). Our planetary resources are scarce and as a strategy, mass 
media social communication campaigns can be highly effective in changing 
behaviour and in doing so, helping to alleviate some of these problems. 
 
Secondly, Singhal and Rogers quote Bernstein when he states that the growth in 
entertainment media and leisure activities is “one of the most important mega trends 
of recent decades” (Bernstein, 1990. cited in Singhal & Rogers, 1999, p.8). The 
unprecedented growth in appliances such as computers, web enabled mobile 
phones, Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) and satellite dishes means that the mass 
reach of televised or broadcast content is unsurpassed by any other mode of 
communication. What arises from this phenomenon is that the previously 
inaccessible rural poor are now reachable. 
 
2.4. Culture and Cultural studies 
 
24 
 
The media consumer in urban South Africa today receives many more messages 
about socially acceptable male sexual behaviour. One of the most conflicted 
messages is that of multiple concurrent partners. Jonny Steinberg, Open Society 
Fellow, and author of The Three Letter Plague, a book about the messages and 
reactions to HIV/AIDS in rural South Africa, points out in a Business Day (Steinberg, 
2009) article that for the vast majority of South African black males, the ability to 
sexually satisfy many women is their only way to prove manhood and be proud 
males. Steinberg refers to the Jacob Zuma rape case as an example of how deeply 
ingrained and accepted the idea of multiple sexual partners is – in fact, it is the 
man‟s duty to have sex with many women, and to satisfy a women‟s sexual needs.  
 
Sabido‟s model for entertainment-education offers a solution to the problem of 
making value judgements. He wisely suggests that producers use their country‟s 
constitution, legal statutes and any other documents such as UN Charter of Human 
Rights to which the country may be a signatory. Part of his production process is to 
generate a value grid from this moral framework for each series which contains 
positive and negative statements such as “sleeping with multiple concurrent partners 
is wrong”, and “being faithful to one partner sexually is right”. A document containing 
the value grid is drawn up in consultation with religious leaders, community leaders, 
government spokespeople and all interested parties and signed as a pledge of 
support for the series from these sectors of society (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, p.58). 
 
Whereas structuralist semiotics places great emphasis on the coder, or construction 
of meaning in a text (Fiske, 1987, pp.1-20), cultural studies and reception theory 
place an equally high emphasis on the decoder (Morley, 1980 and 1992, Fiske, 
1987).  The entertainment-education model is premised on the assumption that the 
intended meaning is, in fact, the one that will be received by the viewer. Reception 
theories, on the other hand, argue that decoding, or making meaning of a text, does 
not necessarily follow immediately after the construction of a message. There are 
multiple steps in between, resulting in polysemy of readings, i.e. these multiple 
moments in the communications circuit are “linked but distinctive” (Hall, 1973, in 
During, 1990, p.91). The moments of „encoding” and „decoding” are determinate 
moments, and the others all contain meanings and messages in the form of sign-
25 
 
vehicles, organised into a language and mass media communication is thus 
discursive in form. It is in the discursive form that the circulation of messages takes 
place (Hall, 1973, in During, 1990, p.92).  
 
Mass media such as television programming can be seen on one level as a series of 
limited or closed codes because they show a tendency to encourage one particular 
interpretation or discourse. (Hall, 1973, cited in During, 1990, p. 96).  On the other 
hand, the work done by David Morley (1992), John Fiske (1972 and 1978) and Stuart 
Hall (1973) suggests that different social groups will have different readings of a 
media text regardless of the encoding process, and so led Hall to develop his three 
interpretative positions for reading a text, namely: the dominant/preferred reading of 
the text in which a reader shares and accepts the texts code as natural; negotiated 
reading, in which that reader partly shares the texts code, but modifies it in a way 
which reflects their own cultural experiences and interests, and oppositional reading, 
where the social position of the reader places them directly opposite the dominant 
code; the reader reads and understands the preferred reading but does not share 
the code and thus rejects this reading (Hall, cited in During, 1990, pp.100 – 102). 
 
Hall‟s model requires the discourse to be translated into social practice – or action – 
if the circuit is to be both complete and effective. If there is no action or evolution of 
meaning into practice, the communication has a diminished effect. For prosocial 
programming such as Soul City which advocates behaviour change, this translation 
of message into action is crucial for the full meaning of the content to be realised. 
This theoretical framework of interpreting codes, making meaning and then 
translating that meaning into practice forms the theoretical basis for my film, in which 
messages are constructed, and encoded into Hall‟s “sign vehicles” (Hall, 1973, cited 
in During, 1990, p.91), a language is created and communicated to an audience who 
then may either read and accept, read and change or read and reject.  
 
The social and cultural aspects of television reception are integral to this research, 
as the intended outcome of the television series Soul City is to promote social 
change (Japhet, 1999, cited by Tufte), and the intended change occurs at the level of 
the individual, the community and society simultaneously. Therefore, one must look 
26 
 
wider in reception theory to theory that radicalizes the reading of the texts through 
“viewing ordinary people, the audience, as “key agents of change or participants for 
development” (Tufte, 2001, p.5).  What is required from social communication is no 
longer merely change, but more specifically developmental change. Rico Lie and Jan 
Servaes further expand Stuart Hall‟s model to interrogate the relationship between 
communication, culture and identity in the light of increasing globalisation, or the 
movement toward one culture (Lie & Servaes, 2000). Similarly, in social 
development effective programming must operate “...with three interlinked units of 
change; the individual, the community and the broader society” (Tufte, 2001).  
 
This research is therefore divided into two sections. The first will treat Soul City, 
OneLove as a basic text for analysis of the male characters‟ sexual behaviours in 
terms of the series‟ adherence to Miguel Sabido‟s accepted model for effective soap 
opera production for behaviour change. The second, the film component, 
problematizes the entertainment-education model which presumes that a dominant 
message portraying good role models and punishing bad role models (Sabido in 
conversation with Singhal & Obregon, 1999, p.69) will be received as intended; this 
is problematised through the film XY which illustrates how the message may be 
received in context. 
 
The film XY draws on cultural studies approaches to the media in that the viewer or 
receiver of televised messages is seen in his environment, along with the many other 
messages he receives over the course of one weekend. As the film itself interrogates 
aspects of cultural studies such as the context in which messages are received, in 
terms of this research report it stands alone as a component of research and will not 
therefore be treated as a case study for my analysis, but rather as an extension of it, 
i.e. presenting the perspective and context of those who receive rather than produce 
television messages. 
 
In the case of the film XY the young boy watches many programmes over the course 
of a weekend. Some (Soul City) have carefully constructed messages that require 
action on the part of the viewer. Others, like the Bugs Bunny cartoon, are designed 
purely to entertain and no reflection is required. The pornography is constructed to 
27 
 
arouse the viewer sexually, and the first person shooting game is designed to 
simulate action and provide the viewer with an interactive experience. No one single 
piece of text he consumes has the same purpose as another. No two were 
constructed with the same outcome in mind, and as a result, when viewed in 
succession they paralyse the viewer. The boy is unable to take any action because 
the multiplicity of messages is overwhelming and he never talks about what he sees.  
 
The sharing of our experience of television viewing with others in discussion is what 
Stuart Hall calls „discursive communication” (Hall, 1973, cited in During, 1990 pp.91-
103). When we share with others what we think or feel about a television programme 
we are engaging with interpretations of the text and negotiating possible readings of 
the texts seen. We, the receivers, continue to engage with interpretations of the text 
long after the viewing and as we take our readings out into the world with us and 
share them with those around us; we are surely taking the first step towards social 
change. In the case of the film, XY, the receiver is unable to find a message he can 
relate to. As a result he has nothing to take into the world except his extreme 
indecision. If we were to construct a graph on which the horizontal axis, x, represents 
the messages constructed to change social behaviour and the vertical axis, y, 
represents the various media or vehicles that deliver the messages, then the point 
XY is where the consumer, or audience sits. As a title for the film it implies the site at 
which meaning is/should be made from media and also the stasis or immovability of 
that point on the graph.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
28 
 
 
 
 
3. CHAPTER THREE - ANALYSIS OF SOUL CITY ONELOVE 
 
“HIV is a threshold. There‟s life before HIV and life after HIV” – Sol, Soul City Series 
9, Ep 4. 
 
Within the framework of Sabido‟s model discussed in Chap. 2, let us examine the 
struggles of the main male characters in Soul City OneLove: Zimele, a married father 
of two teenagers, and Bulela, his 18 year old son, a Grade 12 pupil. A full character 
list is given in the Appendix (Section 6).   
 
As noted previously, the setting for a Sabido-esque drama series is a melodramatic 
world in which the moral universes of good and evil are in discord, and the audience 
is swept up in the struggle of the forces of good over the forces of evil (Smith, 1973, 
pp.7- 9). Zimele is thus set up as the villain, representing the bad behaviour choices 
and sabotaging the good. From the moment we meet him we see that he is charming 
and quick to flatter, but as the series develops we see how he is actually lying 
continually and his motive for lying is to keep secrets (another key element of 
melodrama) from those closest to him. These two aspects, his wrong sexual 
behaviour choices and his inability to tell the truth, dictate his trajectory through the 
series. Although his flattery does get him a pretty girlfriend, a placated (pregnant) 
wife and obedient children, by the end of the series his words and actions have 
resulted in him being HIV positive, having infected his wife and girlfriend, and a string 
of other young people in Soul City. The twist is that one of Zimele‟s victims happens 
to be Bulela, his own son. 
 
True to melodrama, he is a villain who puts moral pressure on the good characters 
and ultimately causes tragedy throughout. He ends in self-pity but unrepentant and 
unable to fully own up to his wrongdoing and so remains a poor role model. A key 
element of Sabido‟s model is the use of Albert Bandura‟s social learning theory, 
which dictates that bad role models must be punished (Bandura, 1971, p.8), and so 
29 
 
in the Epilogue, “Four months later”, in which the future lives of the other characters 
are mapped out, Zimele is excluded. His type is signalled to viewers as having no 
future.  
 
Zimele and his son, Bulela, thus represent the first two types of characters in 
Sabido‟s model, i.e., the positive and negative role models. As such, they embody 
positive and negative behaviours concerning the social issues addressed in the 
serial drama (here referring to male sexual behaviour), based on Jung‟s theory of 
archetypes and stereotypes (Jung, 1971, pp.380–381 and 400-401). It is established 
from episode one, when we see his gentle disposition, quick brain, and forgiving 
nature, that Bulela, the teenage son, is going to be a hero. Bulela is an innocent, not 
just sexually, but also with regard to the lying and cheating with which the other men 
in Soul City seem so comfortable. He represents a new type of male. On the brink of 
adulthood, he about to finish school and has dreams of studying medicine to help 
others. Throughout the series his aspirations are developed. He falls in love and 
actually “gets the girl” and he wins a scholarship to study in America. As the stakes 
are increased, the more the audience feels anxious that he is being built up only to 
be knocked down as his girlfriend cheats on him and contracts HIV, gives it to him, 
thereby disqualifying him from taking up his overseas study scholarship. However, 
according to Bandura‟s social learning theory, as a good role model, he should be 
rewarded, (Bandura, 1971, pp.7-8) and so in the epilogue we hear that he does get 
accepted to the University of the Witwatersrand to study medicine, and we are 
assured he will have a fine future. 
 
Theki and Tefo, as the married male friends of Zimele, represent two different 
attitudes a married man can take towards having to be responsible in his sexual 
behavior. Theki is similar to Zimele in that he craves extra-marital sex and is always 
creating situations (a braai, a game of cards) in which he can bring alcohol and loose 
women. It is never explicit that these women are prostitutes because they are never 
paid for sexual favours, but they appear to be women who have many casual sex 
encounters.   
 
30 
 
Theki resists all restrictions on his sex life throughout the series; refusing condoms, 
getting angry when people advise him on how to behave, and ultimately losing his 
wife to AIDS because of their combined ignorance and refusal to be aware. Theki is 
the married man that Zimele would be if he did not have an intelligent wife in Lebo, 
someone who is decisive and takes action when she discovers her status. Theki is 
punished for his wrong attitudes and refusal to change by the death of his wife. 
 
Initially Tefo is presented as a slightly comic character. He is the married man whose 
wife, Lihle, is sexually unsatisfied. He is too afraid of his sexual and emotional life to 
ever talk about it with a woman, even his wife. Lihle‟s complaints of sex lasting five 
minutes and her lack of pleasure provide some background to the problems facing 
long married couples and could in one way be seen to present a justification for 
men/women to seek extra-marital or more exciting sexual experiences. Tefo, 
interestingly enough, is the character who most successfully transforms his fear and 
embarrassment into action. He is held up as one of the real heroes of the series 
because he becomes an activist and tries to change the way the men in Soul City 
behave. Tefo moves from representing the typical husband to representing the ideal 
man – a man who is open to discussion about sex. He is modern in that he realises 
that the time to be an “African man” – keeping private what is private - is over. HIV 
has been a catalyst to Tefo, something that forces him to change completely, or 
rather to stop living under fear and to allow himself to become a new creature, 
namely a township man of a certain age, who can talk openly to other men about his 
sex life and his feelings. 
 
Tefo and Lulu, Zimele‟s girlfriend, emerge as strong transitional characters (Bandura, 
1971). Both start in a place very far from ideal – with Lulu conducting irresponsible 
sexual behaviour through transactional sex and Tefo being unable to communicate 
with his wife and in danger of driving her to seek satisfaction elsewhere. However, 
both learn from their mistakes and from the mistakes of others around them and 
actively change. Lulu chooses honesty and a faithful sexual relationship and Tefo 
chooses to become an activist and encourage men to speak out more about their 
sexual needs and the related problems. Bulela and his girlfriend, Dineo, only change 
in that they lose the innocence we see in the beginning. They start off as hard 
31 
 
working, gentle and loyal people and they remain so throughout the many challenges 
they face as the narrative unfolds.  
 
In the case of Soul City fear is always present in the form of HIV infection, or losing 
love. What is interesting is that while some may view fear of contracting HIV as a 
“common sense fear”, fear of testing for HIV is portrayed as the irrational fear. Tefo‟s 
fear of talking about sex with his wife is meant to add humour and pathos to the 
situation, representing the position in which many long married couples find 
themselves. Zimele‟s fear of testing stems from a deep down acknowledgement that 
he has indeed committed adultery many times with many women he hardly knows 
and without protection. His behaviour as a man has been exactly that which his wife 
Lebo describes as “a husband who infected his wife with HIV” and nothing like the 
persona he struggles to maintain, namely the good man who takes care of his family. 
It is his fear of being discovered as a lying cheat and a man of many secrets that 
paralyses him almost more than fear of being found to be positive. Once he tests 
and all comes out, that fear is nullified and Zimele is now across Sol‟s HIV threshold. 
He is ready to start building a life after HIV without fear of his true nature being 
revealed to the community. Zimele can now see his past behaviour clearly as he 
watches the other married men at the tavern pick up prostitutes for the night, get 
drunk, and lie to their families. As a model of poor behaviour choices Zimele remains 
paralysed, repulsed by his former self, but still unable to fully realise change. 
 
Carl Gustav Jung‟s theory of the collective unconscious is a way of explaining how 
individuals from different backgrounds and environments and cultures, even different 
eras, can have subconscious manifestations of objects, situations and symbols that 
are similar, reflect patterns and yet are not experienced by those individuals in their 
conscious lives. Jung developed the theory using dream analysis, and built on 
Aristotle‟s theory of aboriginal “types” to give us the list of “characters‟ or Archetypes” 
that populate our collective unconscious (Jung, 1954, p.67).  
 
Jung describes the collective unconscious as having the power to influence our 
“conception of all problematical things......collective ideas intimately bound up with 
the view of life and the world of the past centuries and epochs” (Jung, 1971. p.220). 
32 
 
These collective primordial ideas are made manifest in archetypes and stereotypes 
(Jung, 1954, p.67) and these theories inspired Miguel Sabido to create characters 
who themselves represented various universal aspects of the human condition. 
Sabido further developed this theory by positing that humans seek to make meaning 
of their lives by reflecting their experiences in popular media such as televised soap 
operas. (Sabido in conversation with Singhal & Obregon, 1999, pp. 69-73). In other 
words, television is not just to entertain, but the arrangement of characters, plots, 
situations and consequences in soap opera should in some way provide the viewer 
with a larger context of his/her life in which s/he can make meaning of their own 
personal existence according to a bigger, more social, collective way of living.  
 
Although OneLove, Series 9 is set in the fictional South African village of Soul City, 
there are no references to traditional African beliefs, traditional African customs or 
traditional healers. There is, in fact, no evidence on screen of any research into a 
collective unconscious of South Africans. In the Three Letter Plague (Steinberg, 
2008), we hear how AIDS is seen as a curse and how many South Africans have a 
strong belief in the power of dreams, the ability of demons to enter a person through 
their dreams and how illness is viewed as the result of a curse someone has had put 
on a person. (Steinberg, 2008, pp. 124 – 125)  These beliefs are widely held 
throughout Africa particularly the power of dreams to affect the health and wellbeing 
of a person. (Steinberg, 2008, pp.127 – 128 and 159). This is a rich area of collective 
belief and tradition for use in a scripted drama and could offer the viewer a more 
traditional African world view instead of the Western scientific universe in which the 
inexplicable and the supernatural have no place. 
 
Evident in the OneLove series are the following archetypal characters from Jung‟s 
list of possible manifestations: 
Zimele represents the shadow. The shadow is something split from us in our early 
lives. It is dark, shadowy, unknown and potentially troubling and plunges us into 
chaos or battle (Jung, 1954). This character represents repressed ideas, 
weaknesses, desires and instincts and shortcomings.  He has destructive secrets, 
and over the course of the series he not only refuses to admit to any of them he also 
tries to get other people, including his own daughter, to keep his secrets as well. 
33 
 
Zimele lies easily, cheats consistently and as a result can be seen as the villain 
because of his refusal to change until it is too late. His secrecy and lies make him an 
archetypal “shadow”. Where Zimele goes, following his sexual desire, chaos, 
darkness and fear follow. 
 
The Jungian “persona” or “mask” is how we present ourselves to the world (Jung, 
1954). Zimele also has a strong persona, namely that of the caring, protective 
husband and father. He is continually telling his wife what he does for the family as 
the father and husband, and he is often referred to as a “good father and husband”,  
but his actions constantly undermine this description as merely a mask. Zimele 
reveals to the viewer the ease with which society will label a married man as „good” 
without any searching below the surface. In fact, by episode 13 when it comes out 
that one man is responsible for infecting Lebo, Lulu, Zakes, Dineo and Bulela, Bulela 
says of him “this whole mess is because of some sugar-daddy?...we have to tell 
everyone there‟s this old man sleeping with everyone and infecting kids”. That‟s what 
the “good father and husband” has become. The seemingly respectable middle class 
man has been exposed. He is punished by losing the love and respect of his family, 
and having to live with the knowledge that he effectively curtailed his son‟s 
aspirations and put all their lives at risk. 
 
In Soul City OneLove, the strongest presence of Jung‟s family and story archetypes 
(Jung, 1954 and 1964) are presented as the character Sol, the wise old man, and in 
Lebo‟s pregnancy, where the baby represents all future hopes of the community. As 
the wise man, Sol is a medical doctor, the only one working at Soul City‟s clinic and 
thus holding great social and intellectual standing in the community. He is also a 
friend, part of the group of men who meet regularly in Soul City taverns to drink, 
braai, chat and meet women. In his context as doctor, Sol advises people about their 
behaviour “wear a condom”, “you must test or waste time worrying. Knowing is better 
than not knowing” and offers emotional support because it is Sol who will always be 
the first to know if anyone is HIV positive as he does the testing. In the context of 
friend, Sol watches more than acts, but when he acts he does so with the wisdom of 
the safe sex message – “should not you protect yourself? Here, take one of these (a 
34 
 
condom)”. Sol, the wise man, always carries condoms in his shirt pocket, just as 
Lebo, the wise woman, hands them out from her stock in the shop. 
 
Over the series, the wise man appears at moments of crisis for the other characters 
and his advice is either taken (Lebo, Lulu) or ignored (Theki) with each path having 
its own consequences. For some the rewards of following the wisdom of Sol are very 
clear, as in the case of Lulu. After being persuaded to test, and discovering she is 
indeed HIV positive, Lulu decides to change her life. She gets a job at the clinic and 
can finally break away from a life of quasi-prostitution. On the other hand, Theki‟s 
wife Miriam who refuses to test, becomes infected through his dangerous behaviour 
and ultimately dies because she will not face up to the facts resulting from an HIV 
test.  
 
Another archetype, the baby, is a classic filmic archetype of hope for the future. 
(Jung, 1954) In this case Lebo finds out she is pregnant with her third child, a 
“laatlammetjie” in Episode 1. This sets up an anticipation of what kind of future world 
the child will be born into, given the behaviour of all the people in the world around 
its mother. As the series unfolds and more and more people test positive each week, 
the main question surrounding the baby is “will it be HIV positive or not?” HIV itself 
becomes a character, a shadow, something that comes to you as a punishment for 
not wearing a condom. Indeed, every person who has sex in the series without a 
condom becomes infected, although their status in life and the circumstances 
surrounding their sexual encounters differ widely. Zimele contracts HIV from a 
nameless woman, one of the many loose women with whom he has sex at taverns 
after drinking.  Lebo contracts it from sex with her husband when she falls pregnant. 
Lulu contracts it from sex with Zimele for money and food for her sick granny and 
young sister.  Zakes contracts it from sex with his only girlfriend who lies about being 
faithful to him. Dineo, a virgin when the series starts, contracts it from a one night 
stand of drunken sex with Zakes after they are both feeling betrayed by their 
partners. Bulela, also a virgin when the series starts, contracts it the second time he 
has sex in his life with his first girlfriend, Dineo, who does not reveal her indiscretion 
with Zakes. 
 
35 
 
The fear of HIV is represented by Bulela‟s younger sister, Mihlali, who has been 
stealing money to stash away so that she can look after herself and the baby when 
both her parents are dead and she is an AIDS orphan. In the final episode, Sol allays 
her fear by explaining to her that HIV positive people can live a normal life and he 
reveals that he himself is living with the virus. Once we hear this, like Mihlali, we are 
reassured that all will be well, that HIV is not the death sentence it was at the start of 
the first episode. We now have faith that the good characters have a future, as Sol‟s 
existence shows us it is possible. Sol describes the situation as life before HIV and 
life after (with) HIV, and as each character contracts the virus they grow in self-
awareness and maturity and HIV holds less and less fear. By the end Lebo leaves 
Zimele, the cheating lying husband and Lulu gets a job and does not have to sell 
herself anymore. Zakes focuses on his career as a soccer player, Dineo goes to 
England to study and Bulela goes to study medicine. 
 
On an emotional level the dramatic tension becomes located in the family dynamics.  
Given that Zimele has infected Lebo with HIV caught from his many extra-marital 
affairs, she struggles to forgive him. Compounding their marital problems is the 
presence of Eddie, the teacher, who is a good friend of Lebo‟s. Eddie represents 
everything Zimele is not; he is caring, understanding and a good companion. The 
question of whether their marriage and family will survive HIV becomes far more 
important in driving the narrative than whether the individuals will survive infection. 
 
More detail in a breakdown of each episode is given in the Appendices (Section 7, 
Table 2 and Table 3).   
 
OneLove contains definite messaging of an intellectual nature. We are given facts 
about how to find ways to satisfy your partner (read books, ask for tips from a 
counsellor, go for counselling together), facts about HIV anti-bodies and the window 
period, (you do not test for HIV but for anti-bodies trying to fight it), facts about 
sexual responsibility (always use a condom, you do not know if your partner is really 
faithful), and about living with HIV (modern medicine means you can live a normal, 
albeit careful, life on ARV‟s). On an emotional level we have the unjust suffering of 
Bulela through the actions of his girlfriend and father, and we have Lulu‟s humiliation 
36 
 
as she is continually refused a job, but approached by men for sex wherever she 
goes, until she has to sell all her clothes to put food on the table. There is no 
evidence of any triggers that work on the reptilian cortex which is the site of titillation 
and disgust or similar strong, uncontrollable responses to stimuli. Similarly, by the 
end of the series there is very little in the way of melodramatic conclusion of either 
triumph or defeat (Smith, 1973, pp.15 and 56) for Bulela and Lebo, who could be 
seen as the injured parties in the story.  
 
Soul City OneLove delivers clear educational content which is dramatized. In terms 
of Sabido‟s framework we can see that it touches on the dramatic and psychological 
theories to some extent, but there is a strong tendency towards recreating a white 
Western type of dramatic world for the characters in which controversial beliefs such 
as witchcraft and curses, and the social acceptance of African men to have multiple 
sexual partners are not given expression. (Steinberg, 2008 and Hunter, 2005). This 
Westernized, dominant reading does assist in destigmatizing people living with HIV 
and AIDS and offers medically and psychologically sound solutions to the problems 
of multiple concurrent partnerships (such as always using condoms, discussing your 
sexual needs with your partner, or using books for tips to improve sex with your 
spouse). However, as vehicle designed to change sexual behaviour it may not be 
successful because the series shies away from confronting some of the ugliness in 
people and in the disease itself. The concluding chapter will further discuss these 
findings.  
 
The following chapter interrogates the premises of the entertainment-education 
model by problematizing the context in which the programmes are received through 
the film XY. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
37 
 
 
 
4. CHAPTER FOUR – AUDIENCE RECEPTION THEORIES, AFRICAN 
MASCULINITY AND THE FILM XY 
 
The film XY interrogates the assumptions of entertainment-education that a clear 
intended message will be read as such by a viewer. It does this by utilising the 
theoretical insights and empirical findings relating to media reception by scholars 
working within the cultural studies paradigm, as well as by drawing on the 
scholarship on African conceptions of masculinity - two important areas of relevance 
to any discussion of media and behaviour change relating to multiple concurrent 
partners within an African context.  
 
4.1.  Audience reception theories and cultural studies 
 
From its beginnings in the 1960s and 70s, cultural studies approaches to the 
reception and consumption of media texts have consistently pointed out that while a 
producer may indeed have a single preferred intended message, there are many 
factors that affect the viewing of a televised text and that result in a multiplicity of 
interpretations (Fiske, 1987). The concept of “polysemy” refers to the “interpretive 
scope of media texts” (Jensen, 1990, p.57), and refers to the multiple potential 
readings embedded within any single media text. Polysemy, as a concept, emerged 
from the cultural studies movement to help account for the manner in which multiple 
readings of media content were seen to arise from the multiplicity of environments 
and cultures in which audiences are situated (Hall, 1973, Morley, 1980 and 1992, 
Curran & Morley, 2006, Fiske, 1987).  It was argued that several potential readings 
exist in any one text, although there is a usually a dominant or preferred reading 
intended by producers.  
 
In his essay on encoding/decoding, Stuart Hall (1973) problematizes the readings of 
television texts by calling into focus the area of subjectivity (Hall, 1973, cited in 
During, 1990, pp.99). If, indeed, the message broadcast by producers is an objective 
fact, and the viewer subject to individual and private interpretations of a text (Hall, 
38 
 
1973, cited in During, 1990, p.99), then miscommunication or misunderstanding of a 
televised message is possible. Hall prefers to explain supposed misunderstanding as 
rather a situation in which the viewer is “not operating within the dominant or 
preferred code” (Hall, 1973, cited in During, 1990, p.100). Hall goes on to explore 
further the notion of individualized readings by proposing that individuality is never as 
unique as we may think, and that patterns exist within groups of viewers, allowing 
several, but not infinite, positions of decoding of a text. These positions are 
described as being (a) the dominant-hegemonic, in which the producers‟ “preferred 
reading” is received and understood, (b) the “negotiated position” in which the 
audience can identify what the producers intended the dominant reading to be, but 
interpret it with a partially opposing and adaptive approach (Hall, 1973, cited in 
During, 1990, p.102), and (c) an oppositional or resistant reading. (Hall, 1973, cited 
in During, 1990, p.103), in which the viewer understands the preferred reading, but 
chooses to decode the message in a resistant manner which then relocates the 
codes in an alternative frame of reference. In the case of entertainment-education 
this implies that the carefully constructed messaging of pro-social media could be 
read in ways other than those intended by the producers. How audiences receive 
messages is of particular interest in the case of Soul City, OneLove, which has a 
strong message – to discourage male sexual patterns of multiple concurrent 
partners. 
 
In the previous chapter the analysis of the series shows how Soul City adheres to, or 
deviates from, Miguel Sabido‟s strategic framework for developing effective 
behaviour change media, or how successfully the series has been constructed to 
change certain social behaviour. This chapter now proposes to explore how the film 
XY problematizes the assumptions underlying the entertainment-education model by 
highlighting the context in which these messages are received.  
 
XY implies a graph, which is a mathematical domain where information is plotted 
along two axes – the “x” and the “y” - and certain meanings are extrapolated from the 
points along the graph at which the axes meet. Similarly, the film XY exists as a 
visual field in which various signs intersect and the audience is encouraged to make 
meanings of the juxtaposition of images through editing, action and characters. 
39 
 
 
In his book Television Culture, John Fiske (1987) investigates the problem posed by 
the existence of a television ”subject” – a being as the “central site of the sense-
making process” (Fiske, 1987, p.48). Drawing on Marxist and structuralist 
approaches, Fiske dismisses the simplistic notion that an individual viewer interprets 
a single, individual message as intended from a television programme because 
interpretation is subject to factors such as race, class, gender, environment, nature, 
and society; as such viewers make meanings as groups of individuals, or cultures 
rather than as indeterminate separate beings (Fiske, 1987, pp. 48- 49, Hall, 1973, 
cited in During, 1990, p.100).  
 
The coding of text by the producer and the problems that arise in situ when the 
viewer decodes them were first introduced by Hall in 1973 in this seminal essay on 
encoding/decoding. While the previous chapter analyzing Soul City OneLove 
focuses on the moment of construction or production, this chapter looks at another of 
Hall‟s “linked but distinctive moments” – that of consumption or reception (Hall,1973, 
cited in Durning, 1990, p.91). This chapter analyses the film XY in relation to the 
challenges posed by audience reception theories to the entertainment-education 
model: namely that messages are received in context (Morley, 1992, Fiske 1978 and 
1987), and secondly, that assumptions are made about audiences, which may not be 
accurate (Livingstone, 1998). These two theories are set up directly against the 
education-entertainment model which posits that the genre is “…the process of 
purposely designing and implementing a media message both to entertain and 
educate, in order to increase audience members‟ knowledge about an educational 
issue, create favourable attitudes, and change overt behaviour” (Singhal & Rogers, 
1999, p.9).   
 
4.2.  Images of Masculinity 
 
XY represents the sex chromosomes of the male in humans and refers to the young 
boy who is watching a variety of models of male behaviour. The film XY takes the 
viewing experience of a 14-year old boy living in an urban African scenario. He is 
depicted as living with an older sibling who supports him, with no visible or alluded to 
40 
 
parents, with no female influence in the household, in an uninspiring landscape of 
ugly buildings and concrete, with very little to stimulate his imagination except for the 
ever-present television screen. And much like any other bored and neglected 14-
year old boy, he spends his weekends either watching television, DVD‟s or playing 
video games on said screen. The boy in the film is at the threshold of making 
meaning from the messages he receives in his life about how to be a man. Whether 
through the role modelling of his brother, or the role models shown on television 
films, he is exposed to a variety of possible images of “manhood”.  
 
In their introduction to African masculinities, a collection of essays exploring 
masculinity in developing contexts, Robert Morrell and Lahoucine Ouzgane identify 
indigenous knowledge as one of the key factors driving post-colonial African gender 
literature (Morrell & Ouzgane, 2005, pp.6-7). The significance of the ancestors and 
the required rituals that must be performed to introduce each new child to their 
ancestors in order to be able to ask for the ancestor‟s protection and guidance is a 
key part of African culture even in urban Africa today. (Steinberg, 2008, pp 158 – 
159). Unconnected to his ancestors, the boy has no access to the traditional 
knowledge of his family, and is therefore alone and uninformed about what it means 
to be a man. In addition to these offerings, the Boy is exposed to the real life 
behaviour of his older brother, who has many girlfriends, and is troubled in his sleep 
by a dream of a strange old man who keeps asking “Do you know me?” The man is 
first seen in a documentary about migrant workers coming to work in Johannesburg. 
In the televised film he talks about how he had to leave his village because he made 
a girl pregnant, and then sought work in Johannesburg. This character represents 
the Boy‟s ancestors, men from a previous era. In traditional African culture, a child is 
introduced to his or her ancestors with a ceremony to ensure that the child is 
connected to his/her family line, so that they can call on their ancestors when they 
need help because the ancestors know who they are. In this case, the Boy has been 
cut off from these traditions. He no longer has access to elders in his family who 
could give him guidance about how to live as a man. The old man also represents 
the black male from an earlier era, similar to the men in DRUM magazine in the 
1950‟s. In her chapter entitled To Be A Man: Changing Constructions of Manhood in 
DRUM Magazine, 1951 – 1965, Lindsay Clowes (2005), explores the metamorphosis 
41 
 
of African masculinity in that era from a domesticated father-figure, fully involved in 
family life, to an independent individual occupying a private space. (Clowes, 2005, 
pp.93 – 101).  Although men in DRUM were all firmly rooted in being breadwinners, 
Clowes reveals a shift in male roles from a very present, strong father, strongly 
connected to a community, to a point where “urban black men were...constructed as 
autonomous and isolated individuals, having little or no emotional or physical 
legacies from ... parents, grandparents, siblings, children or even wives” (Clowes, 
2005, p.106). The boy is truly a product of the present, and relies on models in the 
present to try and make sense of his indentify as an African man and the plethora of 
conflicting and unsatisfactory images of masculinity paraded across the screen 
echoes the struggle of the modern African man presented by Margarethe 
Silberschmidt (2005) as disempowered (Silberschmidt, 2005, pp.195 – 196). This 
disempowerment stems from decreased economic opportunities for men and the 
resultant increasing poverty coupled with an increase in female wage earners that 
has undermined the African male self-esteem, resulting in psychological conflict with 
men having reduced economic power but increased sexual freedom. “This has made 
men‟s roles and identities confusing and contradictory, and many men express 
feelings of helplessness, inadequacy and lack of self-esteem” (Silberschmidt, 2005. 
P195). The old man‟s migrant status emphasizes the link between African 
masculinity and a prospering patriarchal homestead and growing gender confusion 
in African relationships. Migrancy and the move into cities opened up new 
opportunities for women to earn their own living while undermining the male‟s 
homestead and base of his patriarchal power. (Hunter, 2005). The film locates both 
young men in this state of confusion and struggling for a new identity. Ultimately, all 
representations of the African man must take into account the multiplicity of ways of 
being for people today, and accept that there is no single version of manhood.  
 
In a paper entitled Young Men and the Construction of Masculinity in Sub-Saharan 
Africa, Gary Barker and Christine Ricardo state that “There is no typical young man 
in sub-Saharan Africa and no single African version of manhood” (Barker & Ricardo, 
2005, p.v). Versions of manhood, they go on to explain, have been variously shaped 
by social constraints, tribal and ethnic groups, Islam and Christianity and “Western 
influences, including the global media” (Barker and Ricardo, 2005, p.v). The film XY 
42 
 
explores these versions in the context of modern man‟s inability to find new ways of 
being masculine as concluded by Silberschmidt: “...the majority of men are not able 
to honor their expected roles as heads of households and breadwinners. This has 
serious consequences for men‟s social value and it is a constant threat to their 
masculine pride. Contrary to women, who have actively created new roles for 
themselves, men have not been able to do so” (Silberschmidt, 2005, p.200). 
 
Hence it is fitting that the boy turns to the television set for ideas and here he is 
confronted by multiple images of manhood and maleness as constructed in Western 
Culture through films made in Hollywood (In the Tarantino and Van Damme films), 
classic literature (Hamlet), gaming culture (Call of Duty), pornography (Sondoza part 
1), myth and fantasy (The Crow and High School Musical). The images and the 
interactions with his brother are jagged, cut-off, unexplored because they are 
unsatisfactory. Only in his dreams does the boy find a communication that implies 
that he part of a larger community that will give him an identity just as only in dreams 
do we tap into a collective unconscious that binds us in a large pattern of human 
experience beyond our actual lived experiences. (Jung, 1954, p. 67 and Steinberg, 
2008, p.132). 
 
 
4.3.  Multiplicity of readings and possible action 
 
The film sets up the environment by keeping the boy and the screen always close in 
frame - as though they have a symbiotic relationship, in which one cannot live 
without the other. The life force of both is controlled by the remote control which can 
kill the screen, increase the volume to shut out unwanted noise from the built 
environment, pause or re-play events. The face and the screen are connected on 
many levels, as a friend, as a mother, and as a teacher. When the boy watches 
television, he has choices and if his attention wanders, and he can change the 
channel. The screen is always subordinate to his choices, except when he sleeps. 
When he is asleep, his subliminal mind plays out dreams and nightmares on the 
screen. The images the boy receives have no meaning to him and carry no weight 
because he is searching for some connection beyond the films he watches. XY does 
43 
 
not show how the Boy decodes the messages he receives. Instead, it shows him on 
the brink of translating understanding into action. 
 
In his article “The politics of polysemy:…”, Klaus Jensen (1990) further expands the 
factors that may produce multiple or polysemic readings by adding the notion of 
genre (Jensen, 1990, p.58). He argues that audiences will make meanings according 
to culture, environment and genre, implying that audiences easily recognize a 
programme as fitting into a certain genre (news, soap opera, documentary, 
magazine programme) and will view the programme according to mutually 
understood codes, conventions and semiotics for that particular genre. Genre is 
defined as a “conventional form of expression and a way of situating the audience in 
relation to a particular subject matter” (Williams, 1977, p.193). In describing his three 
decoding positions – dominant, negotiated and oppositional – Stuart Hall also 
accepts that before taking a negotiated or oppositional stance, a viewer still 
understands the construction of codes and the hegemonic cultural domain from 
which the producers are working (Hall 1973, cited in During, 1990, pp.100-103). This 
construction of codes is how genre is recognized and understood.  
 
The film XY throws into question the genre of entertainment-education, whose very 
name implies a dual purpose; it should both entertain and educate. Because the boy 
never watches anything for more than a few minutes, he is never situated in a 
particular way to the programme he is watching. He watches all programmes in a 
similar, detached and random way, never absorbing one piece of information fully 
before moving on to the next.  He avoids taking cognizance of genre and so avoids 
having to have a particular relationship with the material he watches. As a result, he 
avoids engaging with the dominant reading from each snippet.  
 
The film generates an environment of aimlessness, in which the programmes 
broadcast promote the many agendas of their producers. Such agendas have been 
conceptualized, developed, scripted, performed, edited and then broadcast by a 
myriad of producers all of whom have a different aim and purpose for their offering. 
(Cartoons should make you laugh, combat films should satisfy male aggressive 
tendencies, pornography should titillate, some films should offer witty commentaries 
44 
 
on previous films, some should encourage wholesomeness in teenage love, some 
should scare you and some should inform you). In between these programmes is 
Soul City One Love with its message: Don‟t have multiple sexual partners. Whether 
the boy will ever actualise that message and thus complete Stuart Hall‟s model of 
communication by translating the message in social action (Hall, 1973, cited in 
During 1990, p.91) is left open ended.   
 
In Television Culture, (1978) John Fiske talks about the role of language in the 
creation of meaning between text and reader (Fiske, 1978, p.49). In XY the use of 
subtitles helps to emphasize the important role language has to play in the 
interpretation of meanings. The message of Soul City is confused by the poor audio 
and the subtitles. Language, when subtitled, no longer represents its original culture, 
and subtitles therefore appear as a layer of translation between the intended 
meaning (as spoken by the characters) and the translated meaning, as delivered by 
text on a screen.   
 
Snippets of films and snatches of dialogue hint at narratives that continue off screen 
that will never be watched in full. There are human dramas being played out that the 
Boy can choose to acknowledge or not. This further emphasizes the isolation of the 
boy from humanity. The close ups of the remote and continual flicking through 
channels shows us that the boy is trying to decide something, and yet he cannot, 
because he is receiving so many messages about how he should act, that in the end 
he is paralyzed and unable to “be” anything except a voyeur. John Fiske talks of the 
television as being the viewers‟ “eye” (1978, p.57) on the world. “The crucial “look” 
….is that of the television upon the world” (1978, p.57). And so the Boy becomes just 
that, an “eye” watching televised world, engaging only when he plays his first-person 
shooter game and moves through the fields and trenches of France during World 
War 1. This could be seen as a paralysis, an inability to act but if we return to the 
metaphor of the graph, we realize that this is just one of a multiplicity of moments of 
meaning in which the viewer (the Boy) will interpret and consume a message. What 
he does with that message, the actions he will carry out, the life choices he will make 
are off screen, in the “real” world and may only become manifest at another time. 
 
45 
 
As entertainment-education, Soul City has as its objective the meanings and 
messages designed to change behaviour. In the case of OneLove, the aim is to 
change male sexual behaviour in relation to multiple concurrent partners; to 
encourage men to remain faithful to one sexual partner at a time instead of sleeping 
with many people concurrently.  In entertainment-education programmes, the 
organization of signs into Stuart Hall‟s “maps of meaning” or “maps of social reality” 
(Hall, 1973, in During, 1990, p.98) is perhaps more conscious and organized through 
strategic frameworks such as Miguel Sabido proposes, precisely because the 
objective of this genre is the adoption of a specific desired behaviour. This behaviour 
is often a result of the audiences own desire for role models or guidance from 
television programming. In an interview with Arvind Singhal and Rafael Obregon, 
Miguel Sabido claims that “The main point is that television has become the big 
moral guide in today‟s world, and people tacitly seek it‟s guidance in making 
everyday decisions….audience members have an intrinsic capacity to learn.” 
(Sabido in conversation with Singhal and Obregon, 1999, pp.69-70). 
 
Hall and Sabido concur on one striking point – that of action. In Stuart Hall‟s circuit of 
communication (Hall, 1973, cited in During, 1990, pp.90 - 91), no actual consumption 
has taken place unless the viewer translates the meaning into social action. This is 
exactly what Sabido‟s model is constructed to achieve through television. The aim of 
the  Soul City Series is essentially to have male viewers re-assess their sexual 
behaviour and change undesirable patterns such as multiple concurrent 
partnerships, thereby moving towards behaviours that are “intended to bring about 
both social and material advancement” (Rogers, 1976, in Brown & Singhal, 1990, 
p.268). 
 
In the film XY the sign vehicle is the film itself. The Boy, as representing a viewer, is 
negotiating meanings from the texts he watches, from his dreams and from his 
experiences. He makes no decisions about what he has seen. He is the moment 
before “consumption”, before social action takes place, and the way he will act is left 
open -ended. Stylistically, the film is not a traditional narrative or drama. We know 
this because the characters have no name, we do not establish their location, and 
there is no beginning, middle and end. The film starts with the switching on of the 
46 
 
television set and ends with a game paused, ready to be restarted. All these signs 
indicate that what we view in between is a series of moments of potential meaning 
that may or may not ever be realized into action by the boy.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
47 
 
5. CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS AND FINDINGS 
 
If we look to change male sexual behaviour using television we need to first see 
what is proven to be effective in behaviour change media. Miguel Sabido offers a 
framework for analysis that has been tried and tested in a range of developing 
countries (Singhal and Rogers, 1999 and Nariman, 1993). Soul City OneLove is a 
highly educational series with a strong narrative premise, namely that of a man with 
an uncontrollable sex drive infecting his own son with HIV. However, on closer 
analysis, it seems that only some aspects of effective soap opera for social change 
have been applied in the scripting, and even in those cases the application is 
superficial. 
 
Sabido-style soap opera drama relies on extensive research to identify the culture- 
or country-specific versions of Jungian archetypes and to identify local archetypes 
that represent the prosocial values (or the antithesis of these values) that will be 
addressed in the serial drama. The formative research is used to develop a grid of 
positive and negative social “values” which these positive and negative characters 
will embody, as well as to inform the scriptwriters so that they develop characters 
that are recognizable in that particular country. (Nariman, 1993, and Singhal & 
Rogers, 1999). Soul City OneLove shows no sign of any such research, and 
produces no such collective subconscious, even though Africa has a rich tradition 
acknowledging the importance of dreams and is fertile ground for the development of 
a world of the programme to which all Africans can relate even on a sub - conscious 
level. In The Three Letter Plague, journalist Jonny Steinberg (2008) tries to 
understand, a young, rural African man‟s beliefs about HIV, AIDS and ARV‟s. In a 
chapter exploring why some people will only visit a traditional healer and others go to 
the “white doctor” Steinberg is confronted with the tangible world of dreams. He 
concludes:  “If the insistence that AIDS is caused by sex rather than witchcraft is 
born from an attempt to drain the epidemic of social toxicity, it is not at all clear that 
the attempt succeeds. What are the demons that people speak of: the ones that 
come to Sizwe in his sleep, feeding him chicken and sex: the ones that made his 
little nephew sick during the night” (Steinberg, 2008, p.132).  
 
48 
 
Whether acceptable to Western theorists or medical practitioners or not, the real 
African existence is populated with demons, dreams that change reality, living spirits 
of the dead, and the proximity of suffering and death itself (Steinberg, 2008). It could 
be argued that to completely ignore the African belief system when scripting a drama 
designed to change sexual behavior in African men is to invite failure on a large 
scale.  
 
Soul City OneLove delivers information using dramatized characters, but with very 
little of the theories of drama and psychology carefully extracted by Miguel Sabido. A 
true Sabido-style series demands more from its producers than delivery of pre-
determined messages. However, this series seems to deliver strongly only on the 
education element with less attention given to the entertainment aspects. Emotional 
situations such as Lulu‟s desperation, Dineo‟s betrayal and Miriam‟s death, all fertile 
ground for dramatic conflict, are underplayed and under-explored. Instead, long 
scenes are given to people in discussion with one another about an aspect of 
improved sexual behaviour – be it wearing condoms, or reading books to find tips to 
sexually satisfy your partner. People and the women in particular, discuss these 
issues at length. In fact, the sign of a mature or good character is defined by how 
much they are willing to talk about issues. While the need to discuss issues is one of 
the important messages of the series, it is not exactly exciting as a narrative/ 
dramatic device and results in characters coming across as lecturers rather than real 
people. 
 
Another example of the failure to stimulate the viewer on a more basic level is where 
the producers have obviously chosen not to show anyone sick from HIV and its 
resultant complications. This would have been a great opportunity to trigger feelings 
of disgust and fear, as per the Sabido model‟s inclusion of the triune brain theory, but 
the only death from HIV occurs off screen to a character seen briefly in only one 
episode. She has a cough and then we hear she is in hospital and then she is dead. 
The greatest omission here is that we never see anyone who is suffering as a result 
of being HIV positive. In other words, viewers have not (a) developed any 
identification with this character and her death is unlikely to elicit any sense of loss, 
and (b) there is no inclusion of the suffering, physical symptoms, emotional trauma, 
49 
 
etc. of someone who has contracted AIDSs. Television is a visual medium and the 
power of the image is such that it far outweighs the spoken word. Jung describes the 
power of learning through example as so effective that “...even the best methods of 
conscious education can sometimes be completely nullified by bad example” (Jung, 
1954, p.150). And so we are expected to feel fear and pity for the characters who 
one by one become infected with HIV, and we must believe that the stakes for each 
one are high and yet we never see what HIV looks like, or what a sick person looks 
like, i.e. we are offered no vision of the scariness of AIDS. Without these visceral 
images, the threat of infection becomes a hypothetical affair and the emotional 
impact on the viewer is reduced. We can understand that Bulela is denied his 
scholarship because he is HIV positive, but we cannot realize the full horror of 
Zimele‟s actions, or Theki‟s refusal to change, unless we experience the worst 
consequences that HIV can wreak upon individuals, families and communities.  
 
Additionally, there is a conflict in the narrative which dilutes its message. This conflict 
lies in the aforementioned treatment of HIV. All undesirable behaviour, which in this 
case is having more than one sexual partner at a time, is punished by the contraction 
of the HIV virus. But at the same time, the message is undermined by the refusal to 
portray HIV as anything but benign which could be read as a choice made by the 
producers to avoid stigmatizing people living with HIV and AIDS as sickly, 
contagious and untouchable. However, the dramatic value of the “bad behaviour” is 
weakened because we never see what the ravages of HIV and AIDS can do to a 
person and besides Bulela being denied a scholarship; we are never actually shown 
a negative consequence of contracting the disease. This omission fails OneLove in 
terms of both melodrama and the triune brain theory, as our instinct to survive must 
be triggered by the threat of the virus in a tangible, non- intellectual way. It takes a 
brave producer to actively script in reptilian zone brain triggers, such as disgust or 
terror, but if Sabido is to be believed and followed, then it is necessary to have a total 
learning experience that triggers behaviour change.  
 
 
“Without a condom it’s the same as sleeping with everyone he or she ever 
slept with” – Billboard on the wall in Soul City 
50 
 
 
The main aspect of behaviour change that is expected by the producers is the use of 
condoms. If HIV represents a villain it could be said that condoms represent heroic, 
rightful behaviour. All the characters, regardless of their morality, are punished for 
not wearing condoms. Whether they then change becomes the conflict explored in 
the narrative. HIV is a threshold and the characters are encouraged to step over 
bravely and embrace a new life. 
 
Whether the audience would adopt safe sex practices after watching the series is 
beyond the scope of this research; however, it should be noted that we never see 
any of the characters actually using condoms. Thus, an opportunity to demonstrate 
how to use a condom, possible resistance by partners to their use, and how to 
negotiate such resistance, are all missed in a series that ostensibly aims to promote 
condom use.  Instead Zimele tries once to have sex with his wife using a condom but 
she is still angry with him and refuses sex, and in another scene Bulela rightly tells 
Dineo that she would never have told him about her infidelity with Zakes if they had 
used a condom, making her truthfulness a result of her unsafe sexual behaviour.  
 
Finally, Soul City itself is a problematic location. It is fictitious village located 
somewhere in South Africa but it has taken on many attributes of a white middle 
class existence. Key conversations take place with the family sitting round the dinner 
table, most people read and engage with literature to inform themselves, and no one 
accuses anyone of witchcraft. On a deeper level, many Africans are not entirely 
convinced that HIV is not a Western plot to kill off the black man. This context of a 
national distrust in the white man cannot be simply shelved for the duration of a 
series. It should be incorporated into the very fabric of the drama so that more 
people than just the urban, westernized African can see their own beliefs reflected in 
the world of the drama and this would possibly trigger more widespread change. For 
some viewers, as one possible expression of Hall‟s notion of an oppositional reading, 
Soul City OneLove could even be seen as propaganda for a sinister Western 
agenda.  
 
51 
 
As Jonny Steinberg discovers when he interrogates true feelings about the white 
doctor‟s needle, “For all our talk on the causes of AIDS, it had taken this trip to 
Nomvalo to out his strongest suspicion about the origin of the epidemic. It was 
brewed, not by witches and their demons, but in the vividly imagined laboratories of 
Western science” (Steinberg, 2008, p.146). The denial of the script to allow the 
characters to explore traditional African cultural beliefs such as curses and 
witchcraft, (Steinberg, 2008, p.131 – 133) and the omission in showing the repulsive 
side of HIV infection greatly compromises the capacity of the series to change men‟s 
sexual behavior according to Sabido‟s model. 
 
In the film XY, the boy is faced with many images each with their own messages. 
This reflects the scholarship and empirical studies of media reception which 
problematise the belief that messages are received as intended by producers of the 
texts. My challenge to the viewer is to decide which, if any, of those images 
dominates. In the making of the film, the pornography proved to be the most striking 
because of the strong feelings it triggers, particularly when edited with the boy 
watching. In the case of the shot of a woman performing oral sex juxtaposed with the 
close up of the boy‟s face watching, there is a deliberate choice to use strong images 
and editing in order to emphasise the point that messages and content can be 
carefully constructed with a specific purpose in mind, but one strong image that 
contradicts the preferred message can undo the attempt to motivate behaviour 
change. In this case, all the messaging about wearing condoms that this boy could 
have possibly received is negated by one scene in a pornographic film in which no 
one is wearing a condom. 
 
With regard to the aim of the series, which is to discourage multiple concurrent 
partnerships, it could be argued that the narrative does not support this aim strongly 
enough. Characters who have sex with more than one person at a time are justified 
in their actions (they were drunk, they need a more exciting sex life, they were angry 
and hurt), and the negative aspects of their behaviour are downplayed through these 
justifications. As a result, the strongest message that emerges from the storyline is 
that “if you‟re going to play around, wear a condom; that way you won‟t get infected 
with a disease and no one will find out”. 
52 
 
 
In conclusion, Soul City OneLove fails to fulfill sufficient criteria as prescribed by 
Miguel Sabido in the development of effective soap opera for social change. Singhal 
& Rogers (1999) point to a common trap when producing educational drama which is 
that “...most educational programmes fail because they only trigger intellectual …. 
responses. An entertainment - education soap opera should evoke emotional 
(visceral) and physical (reptilian) responses from its viewers in order to have the 
desired effect” (Singhal & Rogers, 1999, p.70). There is internal conflict in its 
educational messaging that undermines the producers‟ own aims, and this is 
compounded by the omission of more heightened dramatic techniques. The result is 
a series that is heavily skewed towards the education side of entertainment-
education with little of the entertainment elements included. As such, Soul City 
OneLove could be described as taking us back to a time of ineffective, message 
driven educational programming from the pre-Sabido era. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
53 
 
6. Appendix A - List of characters in Soul City OneLove  
 
The Moloi family 
ZIMELE - Store owner in Soul City, Father, husband of Lebo, lover of Lulu 
LEBO – Co store-owner, Mother, wife of Zimele, pregnant with baby number 3 
BULELA – Their son aged 18 in Grade 12 
MIHLALI – Their daughter, aged 12  
 
The friends of Lebo and Zimele 
TEFO & LIHLE – Married for many years; she is unsatisfied in their relationship, and 
he is scared to discuss anything with her. Lihle is Lebo‟s close friend 
THEKI & MIRIAM – Theki is a player, one of Zimele‟s drinking partners, and Miriam 
stays at home 
SOL – Soul City‟s Doctor 
EDDIE – Bulela‟s maths teacher, good friends with Lebo, they have an attraction to 
each other never acted upon 
 
Friends of Bulela 
ZAKES – First just classmate, then friend of Bulela, Lulu‟s boyfriend 
LULU – Zake‟s girlfriend and Zimele‟s lover, dropped out of school to take care of 
her granny and sister 
DINEO – Bulela‟s classmate and first girlfriend 
 
 
54 
 
7. Appendix B – Analysis table of Soul City OneLove  
 
Table 2: Analysis of Episodes 1 to 6 
Archetype Ep 1 2 3 4 5 6 
Archetypes – 
shadow 
SEX/HIV 
 
SEX/HIV HIV test is mentioned – 
for Lebo 
Lebo is HIV 
positive, Zimele 
denies then lies, 
then gets angry. 
Lebo is angry with 
him 
Zimele worried, 
won‟t test 
 
Lulu tries to get a 
job to get out of 
her prison and 
be with Zakes, 
who she lies to 
A purely sexual 
relationship becomes 
something dark and 
degraded.  
Archetypes - child  
Mihlali – the young 
girl represents the 
future of gender 
relationships “why 
don‟t you ask Bulela  
to set the table – 
because he‟s a boy” 
Lebo is pregnant 
– everyone 
happy  
Lebo‟s baby – 
represents future Hiv 
free 
 
Mihlali wants to know if 
her mother has money 
of her own 
 Dineo has a 
scholarship to 
London, she 
won‟t rush into 
sex – she has  
future 
 
Archetypes – wise 
old man (sol) 
 
 
 
 
 
Sol tries to give 
Theki condoms 
 Sol defends women at 
the braai 
Sol explains ARV 
treatment – he is a 
doctor at the clinic 
HIV is a threshold 
– there is life 
before and life 
after HIV 
 Sol argues in favour 
of one meaningful 
relationship while the 
men want “hot peri-
peri on the side”.  “If 
you don‟t respect 
your wife you don‟t 
respect yourself”. 
He explains how to 
keep a long 
relationship from 
getting boring “there 
are books and 
magazines”!!! 
Archetypes – Dineo and Bulela in  Eddie is like her soul The husband has Bulela and Dineo Zimele and Lulu have 
55 
 
Archetype Ep 1 2 3 4 5 6 
animus/anima maths class – her 
maths side makes 
her a different kind of 
woman – her 
“manliness” makes 
her special, his 
sensitive side 
“feminine” makes 
him special 
mate – male version of 
her 
“he listens he 
understand me not like 
Zimele” also 
represents temptation 
– the marriage 
becomes the golden 
ideal that must be 
preserved at all costs 
infected the wife 
 
When she tells him 
his immediate 
response is “have 
you been cheating 
on me” 
 
Bulela develops a 
crush on Dineo 
kiss, they are 
getting close, but 
they are virgins 
and won‟t rush 
into sex – 
innocents 
 
Dineo leaves the 
party early, she 
is a good girl 
hatred between them 
because of the 
degrading situation 
they find themselves 
in. They have 
degraded the male-
female relationship. 
Persona/mask Lulu is faking having 
a job – has a secret 
sugar daddy 
 
She looks in the 
mirror to try on 
earrings 
“A girl like you surely 
has a man taking 
care of her” 
Zimele – washes 
face, looks in 
mirror ready to 
woo Lulu 
 
His loving 
boyfriend act is 
also a persona 
Zimele as the good 
man – mask – often 
seen at dinner table 
which represents the 
happy nuclear family 
 Zimele lies  - “As 
the father of this 
house I‟ve done 
my best to do the 
right thing at home 
– take care of you 
and the kids” 
 
Lebo: “A good 
father and 
husband does not 
infect his wife with 
HIV” – she reveals 
his true nature 
Theki does not 
use condoms “I 
am a strong 
man” 
Zimele encourages 
Mihlali to lie and 
cover up for him 
(keep a secret) 
Collective 
subconscious of 
the characters 
world  
 
 
The family dinner 
table represents 
a happy family; 
news of 
pregnancy at the 
table ends ep on 
a hopeful happy 
note 
The braai – men want 
to sit and talk 
uninterrupted – sport 
and politics” 
 
They talk about how 
being macho is “putting 
our country in trouble “ 
The world is 
cracking up – the 
pleasures are 
souring 
 Family at dinner table 
again 
 
Men discuss the old 
days when “men had 
20 wives‟ 
       
Bandura – 
modelling - rewards 
Sol shows good 
sexual behaviour – 
gives friend a 
condom 
 Lebo is going to test for 
HIV 
Bulela is kind 
sensitive 
 
Bulela gets a date. 
Dineo says she 
is not ready for 
sex, Bulela does 
not rush her. He 
Dineo and Bulela 
have sex – they don‟t 
wear condoms 
because they are 
56 
 
Archetype Ep 1 2 3 4 5 6 
He has high 
hopes, he 
glimpses 
happiness. 
is heroic in his 
sensitivity and 
displays real 
affection 
 
Lihle trying to 
change Tefo 
virgins and she in the 
pill???? 
 
Lulu still looking for a 
job – everyone hits on 
her and no one hives 
her work – she 
demands from Zimele 
and he is awful to her 
 
Bulela is a good 
brother 
Bandura - 
punishments 
Theki and Zimele  Zimele rude to Lebo 
Zimele won‟t tests 
Zimele attacks 
Lebo  
 
Lulu is judged 
 
Zimele is worried 
so he drives to the 
tavern and drinks, 
and picks up girls. 
But this action 
starts to sour for 
him and he panics. 
 Mihlali hers Zimele‟s 
secret with Lulu – he 
wants her to keep it a 
secret (lies) 
 
Bulela and Dineo 
have unprotected 
sex. They will 
punished for this 
later, 
       
Bentley – 
melodrama pity 
Lulu is a victim – we 
pity her 
 
 Zakes is hard on Lulu – 
she tells him she‟ll 
break it off with Zimele 
and look for a job  (she 
can‟t separate the two 
things) 
 
She does not get 
another job granny is 
sick – in foreground 
she is stumped 
 
Lulu‟s Granny is 
sick and needs the 
doctor, there is no 
money. 
 
Lebo rages against 
the injustice -  that 
she is positive 
through Zimele‟s 
selfishness 
 
Lulu is judged for 
Bulela and Dineo 
– innocents, 
have big dreams 
 
Zimele tries it 
end it with Lulu – 
gives her cash 
and won‟t sleep 
with her 
 
Good girl Dineo 
goes home early 
Mihlali and Bulela are 
innocents about to 
suffer 
 
Lulu can‟t find a job – 
the one thing that will 
set her free from the 
life she hates. She 
demands food and 
money from Zimele 
who is awful to her. 
She is humiliated. 
57 
 
Archetype Ep 1 2 3 4 5 6 
Lebo is going to test,  her actions by 
Dineo 
from party  
Mihlali overhears her 
father ad Lulu and 
learns the truth. Then 
her father tries to get 
her to cover up for 
him 
Bentley – 
melodrama - fear 
 
 
Zakes jumps out 
in front of car, 
spies on them 
Zimele is scared of Hiv 
test – is worried 
Zimele lies to Lebo 
about cheating – 
tells her it was 
once and he was 
drunk 
Bulela‟s biggest 
fear is never to 
leave this place – 
he starts having 
aspirations 
Zimele makes hid s 
daughter keep 
secrets from her 
family 
 
Bulela and Dineo 
have unprotected sex 
because they are 
both virgins and she 
is on the pill 
Bentley – hero  
 
Bulela – tells 
everyone it was 
an accident, 
defends Zakes at 
dinner 
 
 
 
Zakes wants to tell 
them  - he is also very 
humble “:if I had a 
brain like Bulela‟s‟ he is 
surprising 
Bulela is a perfect 
woo-er 
Zakes defends 
Lulu‟s honour at 
the party when a 
drunken man 
makes 
comments to her 
 
Bulela is a good 
brother 
 
Sol tells the men that 
sex is better if it 
involves your whole 
being 
Bentley - villain Zimele is set up as 
someone who lies, 
cheats and does not 
consider women 
much at all 
 
Zakes – violent 
and dangerous – 
but a star on 
soccer field. 
Then attacks 
Bulela 
 
Tefo – won‟t talk 
to Lihle (wife) 
Zakes moving towards 
hero – in transition – 
won‟t give z up in front 
of wife – has respect 
for women and family, 
as opposed to Zimele‟s 
cover of “good man” 
but he does not 
respect women or 
Zimele goes to 
tavern and freaks 
out when he sees 
all the married 
men with 
prostitutes – from 
guilt. 
 
Zimele cannot tell 
Zimele can‟t 
sleep with lulu 
but he offers he 
food to leave him 
alone, he offends 
her deeply 
Zimele is cruel to Lulu 
and when his 
daughter overhears, 
he tries to get her to 
keep his secret 
thereby involving her 
in his infidelity to her 
mother 
58 
 
Archetype Ep 1 2 3 4 5 6 
 
Zimele – no time 
for Lebo – but 
goes to support 
Bulela play 
soccer – chases 
customer away 
family 
 
Zimele is the villain – 
money missing, lying 
cheating – yet they 
keep calling him a 
“good man” 
the truth or accept 
responsibility for 
his actions 
Any other male 
issues: 
Maths – a place to 
show Dineo‟s talent 
Tefo – we feel 
sorry for him, he 
can‟t talk about 
sex with his wife, 
runs away 
  Theki won‟t use 
condoms 
because he us  
“strong man” 
Tefo is panicked at 
the thought of trying 
different sex acts 
       
Maclean – reptilian 
(impulses) 
 
 
     
Maclean – 
neocortex (thinking 
- MESSAGES) 
Sol and condoms    Sleeping around 
is bad, not using 
condoms is 
worse 
Having sex without 
condoms is like 
having sex with 
twenty people 
Maclean – 
limbic/mammalian 
(emotions) 
Lulu‟s predicament 
tugs at heartstrings, 
old granny scenes 
 
Zakes angry and 
aggressive, Lebo 
happy  
 Anger from Lebo 
about being 
positive, Zimele 
has guilty anger 
(anger at being 
caught out) 
 
Dineo judges Lulu  
Pity – Zimele 
offers Lulu food 
to go away and 
leave him. She is 
so desperate she 
takes it even 
though he treats 
her badly 
Pity for Lulu, disgust 
for Zimele. 
Apprehension for 
Dineo 
 
 
 
 
59 
 
Table 3: Analysis of Episodes 7 to 13 
Archetype EP 7 Ep 8 Ep 9 Ep 10 Ep 11 Ep 12 Ep 13 
Arche 
types – shadow 
HIV – Lulu and 
Zakes must test 
 
Sadness from 
secrets pervades 
 
 
Secrets have 
replaced HIV 
which is 
losing its 
power 
Secrets and 
lies are 
weighing 
everyone 
down 
Zimele tries to 
shift 
responsibility, 
can‟t tell the 
truth 
Fear of AIDS 
= Death, fear 
of losing 
parents 
A death from HIV The family breaks 
apart and leaves 
Zimele behind 
Arche 
types - child 
Mihlali is sad, the 
secret is eating at 
her 
Nozi – 
pregnant 
mother 
represents 
hope after 
HIV 
Bulela‟s hope 
for  
scholarship to 
the states, the 
baby 
 
Mihlali hears 
everything he 
says about 
Eddie and Lebo 
(lies) 
Mihlali starts 
to steal food 
and money 
as she is 
scared 
Dineo has to tell 
her father about 
her status 
The baby is HIV 
negative 
Arche 
types – wise old 
man  
 
 
 
Sol is at the testing – 
he is to be found 
wherever people 
have to face their 
mortality. Confession 
is the first step to 
putting things right. 
 Sol counsels 
Lulu and 
Zakes about 
HIV testing 
Sol recommends 
Lulu attend a 
support group, 
He mediates the 
support group 
Sol says 
everyone 
should test 
Tefo says 
men should 
start talking 
Tefo become a 
new breed of 
man. He brings 
pamphlets and 
arranger evenings 
for men to talk 
about issues of 
sex, lovers and 
wives ; Sol says 
life is not fair but it 
must make us 
strong 
Tefo is the only one 
who addresses HIV 
at Miriam‟s funeral 
“We all know what 
killed her”; 
Eddie the teacher 
helps the students 
stay on track, Sol‟s 
wisdom has spread 
the these men as 
well 
Arche 
types – animus 
/anima 
Men face against 
women – jealousy, 
distrust, hatred 
Zakes and 
Dineo agree 
to keep “their 
secret” 
Bulela and 
Dineo try and 
work out their 
feelings 
Zakes and 
Lulu test 
together 
Eddie tries to 
play a bigger 
part in Lebo‟s life 
The  couples 
all break up 
Friendships are 
renewed but 
relationships are 
fragile 
Bulela and Dineo ; 
Zakes and Lulu, 
Zimele and Lebo all 
go their separate 
ways into the future 
Persona /mask He confesses to Sol 
“I‟m one of those 
men” 
Zimele 
continues 
with his 
Zimele wants 
the 
scholarship 
Zimele won‟t 
stop being 
secretive, he 
 Zimele says he is 
“proud of his son” 
gives advice. 
Zimele is confronted 
by his son “what kind 
of man are you 
60 
 
Archetype EP 7 Ep 8 Ep 9 Ep 10 Ep 11 Ep 12 Ep 13 
 
Zimele bans Bulela 
from a party – saying 
he mustn‟t waste 
time on girls 
(projection) 
secrets and 
lies 
board to see a 
close family, 
Lebo is bitter 
Mihlali hears 
him lying to 
his wife about 
biscuits 
disappearing 
tries to accuse 
Lebo of having 
an affair with 
Eddie and tries 
to implicate 
Eddie as the one 
who infected 
them 
Hypocritically. dad?” 
Collective sub 
conscious of the 
characters world  
       
        
Bandura – 
modelling - 
rewards 
 Lulu tests. 
Her actions 
will result in 
a future for 
her. She tells 
Zakes 
everything. 
 Fikile and Lulu 
stand up and tell 
their honest 
stories in 
support group, 
exposing the 
stigmas 
associated with 
HIV. Lebo tells 
her side 
Dineo tells 
Lulu she 
slept with 
Zakes; Lebo 
and Zimele 
tell their 
children their 
status, 
people start 
to be honest 
Tefo becomes an 
activist, 
encourages men 
to talk 
Bulela gets to study 
at WITS, Dineo goes 
to London, and 
Lebo‟s baby is HIV 
negative. Zakes 
goes to a soccer 
academy, lulu gets a 
job in a top 
restaurant 
Bandura - 
punishments 
Lulu puts her love at 
risk, Zakes will leave 
her 
 
Dineo and Zakes 
have drunken sex – 
for which they will be 
terribly punished 
 Zimele lies 
when 
confronted by 
Lebo 
Theki refuses to 
test 
 
No one uses 
condoms 
Theki‟s wife 
has a bad 
cough. Won‟t 
test for TB 
Theki‟s wife in 
hospital, dying, 
they didn‟t test  
Zimele is 
excommunicated.  
Lebo: “Look at the 
mess you‟ve made”, 
Theki‟s wife dies and 
he know he killed 
her,  
        
Bentley – 
melodrama pity 
Bulela is punished 
unfairly for Zimele‟s 
indiscretions and 
guilt. Everyone 
seems to be trying to 
split them up. Lulu 
Lulu is 
depressed 
 
Dineo 
misses a test 
at school – 
Bulela suffers 
at the hands 
of Dineo, who 
won‟t come 
clean to him 
We pity the 
victims in the 
support group, 
the wife, the 
desperate 
girlfriend and the 
Dineo breaks 
up With 
Bulela due to 
her own guilt, 
Lulu breaks 
up with 
Bulela loses his 
scholarship 
because he is 
HIV +;  
Bulela figures out 
that Zimele was the 
one who infected all 
the young people. 
  
61 
 
Archetype EP 7 Ep 8 Ep 9 Ep 10 Ep 11 Ep 12 Ep 13 
tries because she 
does not want her 
secret known  
Zakes overhears her 
talking to Zimele and 
gets angry 
her work 
starts to 
suffer 
 
Bulela is 
rejected 
trucker‟s wife Zakes out of 
anger 
Bentley – 
melodrama - fear 
Dineo goes to party 
without Bulela; we 
know something bad 
will happen. 
Misunderstanding in 
that he does not 
pitch up without 
telling her leads to 
tragedy 
 
We fear for 
Dineo‟s 
future, Lulu‟s 
mental 
health 
 
Zakes 
realises they 
could all be 
infected 
Bulela is 
shortlisted for 
a scholarship. 
 
He makes up 
with Dineo 
We fear that 
men will never 
be open about 
their sexual 
behaviour and 
therefore HIV 
will continue to 
spread 
Theki‟s wife 
is very ill and 
won‟t test, 
Mihlali fear of 
being an 
orphan 
Theki‟s wife in 
hospital, we fear 
for everyone‟s 
future 
We fear for the Moloi 
family 
Bentley – hero Bulela is in love Bulela has 
his heart 
broken 
Bulela gets a 
chance at a 
scholarship, 
Dineo 
succumbs to 
him – the 
stakes are 
increased  
Bulela gets 
accepted to 
study in USA, as 
we start to see 
that Zakes‟ HIV+ 
status could 
affect him 
Zakes will 
remain true 
to his love, 
Tefo 
becomes an 
activist, 
Bulela is 
devastated to 
hear about 
his parents 
status 
Tefo arranges 
meetings for men 
to talk, makes 
pamphlets, wants 
to bring all the 
secrets into the 
open, expose the 
lies 
Tefo, Eddie become 
new heroes, Bulela 
still has a future and 
moves towards it 
confidently 
Bentley - villain Zimele is positive, 
tells Lebo who tell s 
him to tell his 
girlfriend – so he 
calls LULU 
 
Zakes anger gets the 
better of him and he 
gets Drunk and gets 
Dineo drunk. His 
Zimele still 
keep secrets 
Zimele still 
won‟; come 
clean , keeps 
lying, lacks 
courage 
Zimele tries to 
make Lebo the 
“bad guy”. Shifts 
responsibility 
even thought 
she has been 
faithful 
Theki gets 
drunk and 
fights with 
Zimele 
Zimele still does 
not own up 
anything to his 
son 
Zimele is exposed, 
Zimele is 
excommunicated, we 
hear nothing of his 
future, he is no 
longer part of the 
family 
62 
 
Archetype EP 7 Ep 8 Ep 9 Ep 10 Ep 11 Ep 12 Ep 13 
jealousy also makes 
him stir between 
Dineo and Bulela. 
Any other male 
issues: 
Zakes and Zimele 
seek drink and girls 
when upset 
Men don‟t 
like to talk 
about sexual 
issues. 
  Sol wishes 
everyone 
would test, 
Tefo backs 
him up 
The private has 
become public. 
Nothing can be 
private anymore 
(since HIV) 
Many south Africans 
think that having 
more than one 
sexual partner is 
normal. SOL 
“gentlemen, it‟s time 
to think with our 
heads not with our 
privates” 
        
Maclean – reptilian 
(impulses) 
       
Maclean – 
neocortex 
(thinking) 
You must know your 
status 
You need to 
add romance 
to an old 
relationship 
HIV anti-
bodies and 
window period 
 
 Everyone 
should test 
 Men like variety but 
they need to think 
more rationally  
Maclean – 
limbic/mammalian 
(emotions) 
You must test or 
waste time worrying. 
Knowing is better 
than not knowing. 
Bulela is deeply in 
love 
Dineo feels betrayed, 
Zakes is jealous, 
Lulu is scared 
Lulu is 
scared, 
Dineo is 
guilty, 
breaks up 
with Bulela 
Zakes is angry 
with himself 
 The couples 
all break up 
but the truth 
is told to the 
Moloi 
Children 
Miriam dies (off 
screen) 
Hiv and the lies and 
secrecy have 
destroyed a family, 
and brought new life 
to those who accept 
it and move on as 
new creations 
 
 
63 
 
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FILMS  
 
Soul City Series 9, OneLove (13 episodes)