A new television channel catering specifically to South Africa’s mixed-race community has just launched. Onse will be the first Afrikaans TV channel to cater to its biracial community, which makes up 8.9% of the country’s population, a number equivalent to the country’s white population. The channel will mainly be broadcast in Afrikaans, but will also include some content in English.
“The socio-cultural depth of this demographic is varied and extensive and worthy of celebration and embrace,” says the network. “Onse TV is a channel by the people, for the people that opens up a whole new world of opportunities, job creation and involvement with the channel for people who have never had these opportunities before.”
While the channel may be considered controversial by some, it ultimately solves an issue of representation. Today, if existing platforms don’t feature or tell the stories of marginalized groups, new ones will. As described in The Future 100 2018, niche streaming platforms now offer content that targets and represents specific communities. African-American TV network Bounce launched Brown Sugar on Apple TV in July, a streaming platform focusing on the Blaxploitation genre. Similarly, Section II features lesbian films, while Dekkoo features content aimed at gay men, including the original series “Feral.”