Why I Didn’t Kiss Tatiana: 21 Days in the Big Brother Africa House

Abstract

The author, Justice Motlhabani was a contestant in the popular but morally compromised Big Brother Africa reality show in 2007. His book is a manual that provides tips to those aspiring to become housemates at the Big Brother competition but ‘African theatre and performance’ researchers can also glean important insights from it. The show draws its participants from urban middle-class youths in 10 or so sub-Saharan African countries. According to Motlhabani, the show is nothing but three months of vice in the form of drunkenness, smoking, occasional risky causal sex, betrayal, swear words, hypocritical double-standards, and general decadence. He describes the Big Brother facility in Johannesburg as ‘a modern-day Sodom-and-Gomorrah house’ (p. 9).