After a successful debut run last year, I am South African returns to your screens on ANN7 with Maps Maponyane (pictured) as the host of the show. The show zooms in on the lives of accomplished South Africans who are willing to share their success stories. While last year’s theme was 20 years of democracy, this year the show will go with “unity in diversity” where it seeks to promote non-racialism as a reaction to the ugly head of xenophobia.
“I am very happy to be part of a positive show about extraordinary South Africans telling stories of their accomplishments,” said the ecstatic Maponyane.
“What’s important is the lesson that that these are extraordinary South Africans who were passionate about something and then decided to work hard at it. It is intriguing to find out where they started out and how hard they had to work to get what they wanted in life,” he added.
For him, there is a wealth of knowledge that he and young people like him can learn from.
“One of the reasons I signed onto this is the realisation of the number of people that I would interact with throughout my time on the show. It’s not easy to group them on any other day, and here we are going to have a whole pool of them in one place. There is so much to learn, from each and every one of them,” said Maponyane.
Since success can be defined in so many ways, it makes sense to invite all sorts of people with varied forms of success, he said.
“The people we talk to range from people in ordinary day-to-day professions to big celebrities that have been prominent over the years. We have had radio legends like Bob Mabena and Nothemba Madumo join us and share their great stories on how they started out on radio and how they managed to remain relevant throughout the decades.”
In each episode the individual guests reveal their own unique approach to life but, holistically, Maponyane drew some similarities. “The one thing all these people have in common is that they all have the desire to be better today than they were yesterday. There is that desire to excel and they have the commitment to maintain that desire. So it really doesn’t matter what these people do, the drive is the same,” he said.
While his job is to bring these stories to the viewer, as a by-product of being in the vicinity of excellence, it’s no surprise that Maponyane found himself inspired, too.
“I have seen so many professionals so far who make me think of other career choices but the reality is that I haven’t scratched the surface yet but we will see if I commit to anything because we have 83 parts of the show to shoot and so we have a long way to go... If I have to choose, so far I enjoyed the chat with Bob Mabena and Nothemba Madumo, but I know there will be more.”
The show is a build-up to the South African Of The Year Awards which will be held on October 17.
l I am South African premieres on July 13 on ANN7 (DStv channel 405) and it will air Mondays to Saturdays at 6pm.