The Polygamist is not a story about Polygamy: A review by Nkosiyazi Kan Kanjiri

By Nkosiyazi Kan Kanjiri | 2h ago

I have watched the much talked about Netflix series, The Polygamist.

Like many people, I have also followed the conversations it has generated on social media.

Much of the discussion has centred on one issue: unhappy women in polygamous relationships. The series has clearly struck a nerve. Many women see their own experiences reflected in the story.

Yet I think there is a danger in reducing The Polygamist to a conversation about polygamy. To do so is to mistake the stage for the play. The series is not necessarily about polygamy. Even Sue Nyathi, the writer of The Polygamist, the book on which the series is based reveals this in an interview with Newzroom Afrika, “Jonasi is a narcissist. I didn’t know that word then, but if I had known it then I would have probably called it The Narc, maybe, and not the Polygamist.”

The Polygamist is about a man who cannot take responsibility and account for his actions. It is about a man who struggles to say sorry. It is about a man who repeatedly steps on people’s toes and expects them to continue loving him.

It is about manipulation, entitlement and emotional damage. But more importantly, it is about the many ways people become trapped in relationships that no longer serve them.

The question that haunted me throughout the series was not, “Why does Jonasi have so many women?” But, “Why does everyone remain connected to him?” The answer, I think, lies in trauma and survival.

Running From The Shadow Of Soweto

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One cannot understand Jonasi, Essie or Mageshi without understanding Soweto.

The three share a history of poverty, and beneath the wealth, the houses and the cars lies the same fear: the fear of returning to where they came from.

For Mageshi, Jonasi is a lifeline he protects at any cost. To Essie, he is the fulfilment of promises made when they had nothing.

The shadow of Soweto follows all three characters throughout the series.

Jonasi: A man between two worlds

Jonasi is a character women love to hate.

He has three wives. He sleeps with his daughter’s friend. To make matters worse, he was aware his son, Menzi, liked Lindani.

Jonasi manipulates people. He takes more than he gives. Even when he appears grateful, his gratitude often feels like a favour he is extending to others. Yet reducing him to a simple villain would be too easy. Jonasi is a man caught between two worlds, Essie and Joyce.

Essie represents where he comes from. Joyce represents where he wants to belong. He wants to honour the promises he made to his childhood sweetheart, the girl from Soweto while simultaneously building a life that reflects his new social status.

He chases class, culture and success but struggles to transform into the man he is trying to become. He is a man at pains with himself.

The tragedy of Jonasi is not that he remained poor but that he escaped poverty and failed to escape himself. In episode 10, we are shown that Jonasi started juggling multiple relationships when he was still in high school. Jonasi carries this behaviour into adulthood. Indeed, old habits die hard.

To complicate things, the series suggests that beneath his destructive behaviour lies unresolved childhood trauma.

The series seems to imply his father was absent and a drunkard. This does not excuse the pain he causes, but it helps explain that hurt people hurt people.

Money did not create his behaviour. It simply gave him more opportunities to indulge it. He becomes a man who knows how to build wealth but does not know how to build healthy relationships.

Joyce: The cost of staying

Many viewers ask why Joyce stays.

The better question is: what would leaving cost her? Joyce is ambitious, intelligent and powerful. Together with Jonasi, she has built a family, a business empire and a public image. Leaving would mean risking everything she has spent years constructing.

She is not merely protecting a marriage. She is protecting an identity and this explains many of her contradictions. She wants to speak honestly about what is in her heart, yet she remains silent when honesty threatens what she has built.

She accepts Matipa but refuses to accept Essie. Because if Matipa is a symbol of Jonasi’s infidelity, then Essie is the revelation that all her life has been a lie. She feels defrauded. She feels betrayed not only by Jonasi but by Mageshi and Essie – the Soweto trio.

The Essie revelation is the eureka moment for Joyce, that transforms her sense of loss and grief into an even better reason to stay. Revenge.

Joyce is not a woman who accepts defeat easily.

As the series progresses, you begin to understand why hell has no fury like a woman scorned. Joyce’s determination increasingly resembles a desire not just to win at all costs but to teach Jonasi a lesson.

When Jonasi is dying, she remains locked in a battle for control and recognition. The plan to have Jonasi infected with HIV reveals the depth of her anger and her desire to inflict the kind of pain she believes he deserves. For Joyce, victory is not simply keeping her husband. Victory is ensuring that he understands the cost of betraying her.

Even after Jonasi’s death, Joyce continues to show who pulls the shots. The funeral itself becomes less a moment of mourning than a battle of contest. Her decision to wear white while everyone else wears black feels symbolic. She refuses to blend into the crowd. She must be seen. She must be recognised. She must remain the central figure in Jonasi’s story. She must be the ultimate winner.

Essie may take the body. Joyce wins the husband. Her victory, however, feels less like triumph and more like evidence of how much of herself she invested in a man who repeatedly disappointed her.

Essie: The woman with the least power

If Joyce possesses power, Essie possesses endurance. Unlike Joyce, Essie loved Jonasi long before there were businesses, luxury cars or social status. She knew him when he had nothing. She believed in him when there was little evidence that success would ever arrive.

Their relationship was built on childhood dreams and promises made in poverty.

Essie’s love was not merely emotional. It was sacrificial. She gave Jonasi money she had worked hard to earn so that he could pursue higher education and build a future.

In many ways, she invested in his success and believed in him long before anyone else did.

Yet Jonasi’s pattern of behaviour did not begin with wealth. Even as a young man he was already chasing other women. Despite this, Essie remained committed to the future they imagined together.

When Jonasi leaves and later returns after years away, married even, he arrives as the fulfilment of promises once made to a young girl from Soweto. Despite the hurt he caused, he represents the realisation of dreams they once shared. The houses, the money and the status are not merely symbols of wealth. They are symbols of a future once imagined but now realised. Essie feels her sacrifice has eventually paid off.

Come the sharp reality, despite all the sacrifice, she never really fully enjoys. She is rather kept as a dirty secret. One would ask, why she chooses to stay? She is an enabler?

Part of the answer lies in love. Part of it lies in history. But another part lies in Sarah. Essie is raising a daughter who has spent years searching for acknowledgement from her father. Walking away is not easy when your child is still waiting for closure. For Essie, staying is not merely about Jonasi. It is about Sarah.

Essie is perhaps the most powerless character among the adults in the series. She lacks Joyce’s wealth, influence and social standing. She lacks Matipa’s elegance. Throughout the story she repeatedly finds herself on the losing side of battles she cannot realistically win. This dynamic reaches its clearest expression after Jonasi’s death.

When she claims his body, the act feels deeply symbolic. Having lost almost everything else, she seeks to give the man she loved a dignified burial. For a brief moment, she appears to secure something that belongs to her. Yet even this victory is temporary.

In an ultimate show of power, Joyce arrives with police and eventually reclaims control. Essie once again finds herself surrendering to forces more powerful than herself. It is a pattern that defines much of her life. She sacrifices. She waits. She endures. And more often than not, she loses.

Throughout the series, Essie survives not because she possesses power but because she possesses an extraordinary capacity to endure powerlessness.

Mageshi: Can Loyalty Become Captivity?

Mageshi is, in many ways, the opposite of Jonasi. Where Jonasi appears entitled, Mageshi appears empathetic. Where Jonasi takes, Mageshi gives. Where Jonasi creates problems, Mageshi cleans them up.

However, despite these differences, Mageshi remains one of the most tragic characters in the series because his empathy never translates into freedom. He is a man who takes the brother code too far.

To understand Mageshi, one must understand his fear of returning to Soweto. Throughout the series, Mageshi demonstrates that he is less motivated by ambition than by survival. Unlike Jonasi, he is not obsessed with status, class or power. What drives him is something far simpler: he never wants to return to the poverty from which he escaped.

One of the most revealing moments comes when he takes Menzi and Sarah back to the shack where he and Jonasi grew up. The visit is more than a lesson in family history. It is a confession. Mageshi is showing them the nightmare that still lives inside him. His message is clear: abandon the company, abandon the wealth, and you risk returning to this life.

To Mageshi, poverty is not merely a memory. It is a threat. The trauma of his upbringing follows him everywhere. It shapes his decisions, his loyalties and his silence. He spends much of his adult life protecting Jonasi, excusing Jonasi and cleaning up Jonasi’s mistakes because, in his mind, Jonasi represents survival itself. Loyalty becomes a form of self-preservation. This also explains why his empathy has limits. Mageshi often recognises when Jonasi is wrong. He sees the damage his brother causes but rarely challenges him in any meaningful way.

To challenge Jonasi would be to threaten the very system that protects him from returning to the life he fears.

Even when Jonasi takes Matipa, a woman Mageshi loves, he does not truly fight back. The loss is painful. But survival wins. The series portrays that his silence is not approval. It is dependence. This is what makes Mageshi such a tragic figure. He is not powerless because he lacks intelligence or moral awareness. He is powerless because fear has convinced him that freedom is too expensive.

Ironically, the moment he finally becomes free is not a moment he chooses for himself. He is dismissed from the company. Stripped of the role that has defined him for years, Mageshi is forced into a situation he spent his entire life trying to avoid. Yet, something unexpected happens. A burden begins to lift.

For the first time, he experiences life outside his brother’s shadow. For the first time, he discovers that freedom has a different taste from survival.

The series leaves him confronting a difficult question: how does a man learn to live after spending his entire life merely trying not to lose?

Having escaped poverty, Mageshi now faces a different challenge. He must learn how to escape captivity. And unlike poverty, this captivity exists entirely within himself.

Matipa: Freedom Or Selfishness?

Few characters divide opinion as much as Matipa. Many viewers celebrate her as a woman who knows her worth and chooses herself. Perhaps. But the story complicates that interpretation. Matipa’s relationship with Jonasi follows a familiar pattern. Before Jonasi, she was involved with Mageshi despite knowing he was married. Later, she becomes Jonasi’s mistress and eventually his wife despite knowing he already has a family.

Unlike Essie and Joyce, she is not bound to Jonasi by history, poverty or survival. Her attachment appears rooted primarily in ambition. When the benefits disappear, she leaves. Many viewers interpret this as liberation. However, the series leaves behind an uncomfortable question. Matipa does not simply walk away from Jonasi. She walks away from her children as well. If her decision were purely about escaping a toxic environment, one might expect her to leave with her twin children. Instead, she leaves them behind in the very family system she has rejected. The same household she considers unhealthy remains good enough for her children to live. This complicates the idea that her departure is purely an act of empowerment.

Freedom and responsibility do not always move together. Had Matipa left with her children, her departure might be viewed as a complete rejection of the dysfunction surrounding Jonasi. Instead, her choice appears centred primarily on herself. The series therefore refuses to present her as either hero or villain. Perhaps Matipa is selfish. Perhaps she is liberated. Perhaps she is both. The brilliance of the series lies in refusing to simplify her.

Sarah: The Invisible Child

Sarah is one of the saddest characters in the story. She loves a father who continually neglects her. She wants recognition from a man who refuses to fully acknowledge her existence. For 20 years she has lived as a secret!

Her behaviour throughout the series reflects the trauma of living as a secret. She is a child searching for a father and an identity simultaneously. What does it do to a person to spend twenty years waiting to be seen? The series offers an answer through Sarah. Even at Jonasi’s funeral, her first meaningful acknowledgement arrives as an afterthought.

Sarah represents the emotional cost of adults who refuse to take responsibility for their choices.

Mpumi: The Voice Of Reason

Every family has one person who sees the truth.

In The Polygamist, that person is Mpumi. She recognises the dysfunction. She sees the damage. She attempts to challenge it. Unlike many of the other characters, she demonstrates self-awareness. She understands what is healthy and what is not.

But still, she struggles to escape completely. The family keeps pulling her back. Like gravity, trauma has a way of attracting even those who understand its power.

Menzi And The Inheritance Of Trauma

Menzi has a very bitter relationship with his father but through his mother manages to inherit his father’s wealth. Tragically, it is not only the wealth he inherits.

The series quietly reminds us that trauma is often inherited. Children do not always inherit houses, businesses and bank accounts. Sometimes they inherit behaviour. Sometimes they inherit wounds.

Menzi becomes evidence that unresolved trauma does not die with one generation. It simply changes address.

More Than Polygamy

What Sue Nyathi and the script writer achieves brilliantly is showing that everyone in this story is connected to Jonasi by more than love.

They are connected through history. Through survival. Through loyalty. Through ambition. Through dependency. Through trauma. This is why asking, “Why don’t they leave?” misses the point. The better question is: “What is keeping them there?” The forces holding these people together are stronger than the forces pushing them apart.

That is why The Polygamist is not really a story about polygamy. Polygamy is merely the stage upon which the drama unfolds. The real story is about the emotional wreckage left behind by a man who could never take responsibility for the people he hurt, and the many ways human beings become trapped by the very things they believe are helping them survive.

About Author

Nkosiyazi Kan Kanjiri is a Zimbabwean writer, poet, and researcher based in the United Kingdom. He is the author of Looking for Mother, a poetry collection nominated for the 2024 National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA). He also co-authored New Diversity Dawns, a Zimbabwe Publishing House title prescribed as a ZIMSEC O-Level Literature set book. As a researcher, Kanjiri has published peer-reviewed journal articles and contributed a book chapter to Violent Student Protests at Higher Institutions in South Africa. Kanjiri’s writing engages with social and political issues. His articles and opinion pieces have appeared in several South African publications, including the Daily Dispatch, Daily News, Cape Argus, and Pretoria News.

Are you a reviewer of literature, music, film or art? Contact khumbulani@heartand soul.co.zw - 0715450146