SOAP OPERA: Touching Africa’s Heart and Soul with TV

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katy Salmon

NAIROBI, Jul 9 2002 (IPS) - A teenage boy stands by his dying grandfather’s bedside.

The old man coughs, his body convulsing in pain. “Get me my painkillers,” the grandpa motions to his grandson. “No, not that one.”

But it is too late. The boy, Martin, reads the label wide-eyed. “These are for….,” he stutters.

“AIDS. Yes,” sighs the old man. “They are anti-retrovirals. I should have told you. Sorry.”

Martin pulls back, incensed. “You sat there talking to me about expectations, willpower, truth. All this time you were lying to me,” he shouts in fury.

“Please don’t talk to me. Don’t ever talk to me. You’re a liar, a fake,” he yells, storming out.

The closing theme music is drowned out by the audience’s cheers and whoops.

The atmosphere at Nairobi’s Film Studios for the premiere launch of the African soap opera, Heart and Soul, is electric.

Mumbi Kaigwa, editorial producer, puts her finger on it. “When I think about those early days, I realise that we were creating something that is quite rare, particularly in Kenya. It is a quality that is here tonight – and I hope that you are aware of it,” she tells the audience.

“What we were creating, as we created those characters and plotted their stories, was confidence. And that confidence is here in this room tonight.

“We’ve done it. We’ve created something completely new. And we can go on doing it,” she urges the assembled actors, writers, producers and sponsors.

Kenya does not have a very strong artistic tradition when it comes to the stage and screen. Nor is there much sense of cultural pride. Products from outside – be they clothes, music or films – are widely regarded as innately superior.

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers’ coined the slogan, ‘Buy Kenyan, Build Kenya’, to encourage people to support their own industries. But the belief that ‘West is best’ is still very prevalent.

Unsurprisingly, television is dominated by foreign programming. Viewers are subjected to a diet of cheap, second-rate Brazilian and American soaps that have no relevance to their own daily lives. Local television station budgets rarely stretch beyond factual programmes and the odd game show.

With this background, Heart and Soul has attracted a massive amount of hype. High hopes are riding on the show – illustrated by the fact that unprecedented 25 UN agencies are sponsoring it.

The first of six pilot episodes, produced for Ksh15 million (192,308 U.S. dollars), airs in Kenya later this month. If successful – a sure bet given the audience’s enthusiastic response at the premiere – it will be given funding for five years.

The programme is being given free to Africa’s 23 English-speaking countries, a probable audience of around 50 million. Another 30 million East African Swahili speakers are likely to tune in to the radio version.

The United Nations is making an unusually bold move by pouring its money into a soap opera. But radical action was sorely needed.

One of the most devastating problems facing the world’s poorest continent is the HIV-AIDS pandemic. Many years and millions more dollars have been spent pushing out messages about safe sex, to little effect.

Some 700 Kenyans are dying of the disease every day and the prevalence rate among young people is almost one in five.

In 2001 alone, some 2.2 million Africans died of AIDS, according to the Joint UN Programmes on HIV-AIDS (UNAIDS) report released on Jul 2. It is projected that, between 2002 and 2020, 55 million Africans will die earlier than they would have in the absence of AIDS.

Extra efforts are needed to stop the spread of the disease. “We are famous for producing paper and a lot of jargon and acronyms, but we need people to listen,” says Tore Brevik, director of the UN Information Centre.

Heart and Soul’s ‘edutainment’ agenda focuses on five broad themes – HIV-AIDS and health, poverty alleviation, environment, human rights and gender issues.

AIDS is graphically depicted by 69-year-old Noah Meli’s death after having sex with a housemaid and by Simeon Karani’s affair with a prostitute.

The environmental message comes across when the evil Benja tries to convert his mother’s farm from coffee to roses. It means quick profits but ruins the soil.

The first of the gender story lines opens in the first episode, when the Karani family realise they can only afford to keep one of their twins at school.

“Back in my day, girls were expected to be good wives. If you can’t afford to keep them both at school then the choice is clear.

“Charles is doing well. He can make the national athletics team and there is a lot of money there,” argues his grandfather.

The twins grandmother counter-argues, “Every morning I thank God that these children were born when they were. Nowadays more girls are going to school.

“If anybody deserves a good education, it is Charity. She would make a teacher or a lawyer, something with a future.”

Heart and Soul will also use complimentary support media, including rural theatre road shows, billboards, newspapers and youth education packs to drive home the message.

Project director, Clive Haines, wants to get Heart and Soul into every living room across the continent.

“The principle communication quality of a good soap opera is that it generates conversation and discussion around the plots, the characters and the issues they explore.

“It is through such communication that opinions are formed, characters moulded and peer review and pressure brought to bear on individual, family and community behaviour patterns,” he says.

Ronnie Andrews of TV Africa, which is broadcasting the show, is confident that Heart and Soul will do just this. “There is something drastically wrong if this isn’t a huge hit,” he predicts.