Once more with soul

Soul City, the country’s highly rated health-awareness soapie, is back with its sixth season, hauling the nation’s soiled linen out the clinic closet.As affirmative action would have it, Sister Bettina Khumalo (the ever-stern Lillian Dube) has achieved promotion to clinic director. One would expect that she’d be filled with the joys of life. But, no. The respected, hard-assed Bettina falls headlong into a deep depression that leaves her angry and confused. She resists her treatment and, quite rightly, resists joining the depression support group — wouldn’t you?’If people find out I am being treated for depression they will think that I am weak. They will say a black woman cannot handle the pressure of being clinic director,” Sister Bettina moans.Even though her actual depression only kicks in by the fourth episode, the build-up to Bettina’s diagnosis is long and laborious, and takes some commitment to get through — primarily because, in the process, Dube does a fine job of treating everything around her with disdain.Depression is a cruel and unfortunate malady that hardly makes for entertaining viewing, something like an extended headache tablet commercial.But Soul City is not about nice things. It preaches directly at the society (in the nicest possible way) about issues confronting average township citizens as they go about their daily lives. This is a real slice of life. The makers appear to have resisted the soap-opera formula of giving viewers a colourful, relentless villain to sink their teeth into.Instead we have villainous acts of xenophobia (this series is part of the Roll Back Xenophobia campaign) by people who can and will change, miraculously, in minutes, as a result of some moral display. The clinic driver, Baba-D (the popular Fats Bookholane), is shattered when his Mozambican relatives dump themselves on his doorstep, escaping the floods. Baba-D detests foreigners and, besides, he has problems of his own. He’s illiterate and he has cheated his way into his job without producing a driver’s license — a necessary document considering the work he does.Back to his relatives. Resist as he may, Pedro (Mario Jose Mabjaia) and Cecilia (Motshabi Tyelele) are a complication that Baba-D swiftly overcomes, only to find himself at odds with xenophobia in the hood. It is when their daughter Rosa gets a bursary from the church that Pedro and Cecilia really land deep in the dirt. The township becomes inflamed and their little home is vandalised, spraypainted and burnt. Here we have DJ Fresh to the rescue in a bold little cameo, saying something relevant about xenophobia, just like Yvonne Chaka Chaka says something positive about overcoming illiteracy. Guest appearances by celebrities are part of the series’ strategy to drive certain messages home.The Soul City formula — entirely predictable — is as such that, as a viewer, one need not fret about confrontation too much. It becomes clear quite early in the plot that each catastrophe, however big or small, will be followed by a simple troubleshooting solution. Very often this is as basic as ‘take your pills”. Oh, if only life were that easy, one is forced to reply. To ordinary viewers like myself (not a medical expert) the Soul City approach appears very programmatic. Certainly, the sixth season tends not to take human stubbornness and stupidity into account (this may have livened things up). At the base of it Soul City, the place, subsists on an optimistic lie: that all people are created from the salt of the earth. That’s probably why it is so well liked.It’s our own, Proudly South African, internationally regarded piece of edutainment. People should watch it just to see how terrible township life is perceived to be — not a glimmer of humour here. On the opposite end of the societal barometer we have the plot’s two white characters — clinic head Karen van Niekerk (Grethe Fox) and doctor David Hurley (Brendan Pollecutt). These parts have absolutely no issues attached to them in the first four episodes and they appear, generally, to be going nowhere. It’s as though whiteys are entirely free of care and woe. All we can hope for is that one of them will contract some mysterious disease.As for the future of Soul City — there is more bleakness on the horizon as the series takes on its major theme: children.Along with SABC1, the series highlights the needs of children with HIV and Aids. According to the press release: ‘The campaign will show that there are already people in South Africa who care, and will highlight their positive contributions and activities. The campaign will drive the message ‘everybody can support orphans and vulnerable children’, also communicating that there is help available, including grants for children in need.”The campaign is accompanied by the Khet’impilo Roadshow that will target schools, church and youth groups, youth entertainment centres and the likes. The campaign goes by the slogan ‘Every child my child.”Meanwhile, the series grinds on, showing South Africans just how much can go wrong in a day. No, in an hour.