Mpush Ntabeni wrote on Facebook:
Warning: This is a rant!
So, I finally watched Shaka iLembe. If it aimed to be historical fiction, it failed epically. If you want to judge it as belonging to the historical fiction genre: the series has no sense of history, no intelligence or understanding of historical character it was dramatizing. It’s a colossal missed opportunity in that sense.
Having said all that, I think the series was not trying to be a historical fiction in strict sense. It just wanted to cannibalise the current cultural fetish. So, I think it should be judged based only on the quality of its drama. In that it has a huge point of view, which, sadly, it showcases by misusing the Zulu culture it tenuously understands. It makes it [Zulu culture] into a wallpaper, a superficial decor, for tourist cultural voyeurism. Its inept dialogue, amateurish false dramatization of a vague storyline made it excruciatingly painful to watch for me.
My perennial quarrel with South African dramas is an overt obsession with images over words/dialogue, a lack of subtlety on the camera eye, and just throwing everything at a viewer through loud dramatisation that howls rather than moving a narrative in a proper culmination of events. [The last line criticism also extends to the otherwise great story of The Kings of Queenstown, which I found tolerable and cute.]
As you were.