After more than a decade away from South African television, Soul City returns with a new generation of characters, a changed media landscape and an old conviction: stories can do more than entertain. At the launch of Soul City: Let’s Rise, Viranova spoke to the people behind the series about keeping its original DNA alive without making a drama trapped in its own legacy.
Soul City helped establish the idea that a prime-time drama could entertain millions while changing public conversations around health and social behaviour. Let’s Rise tests whether that model can survive in a fragmented media culture where young audiences are shaped simultaneously by television, social media, influencers, algorithms and communities.
There is a moment in the return of Soul City when nostalgia stops being useful.
“They don’t need for us to talk down to them; they need us to talk with them.”
For a television property with the history of Soul City, simply returning would have been enough to generate attention. Generations of South Africans remember a franchise that used popular drama to bring conversations about HIV, health, relationships and social behaviour into homes without separating entertainment from education.
But Soul City: Let’s Rise is arriving in a South Africa that looks very different from the one the franchise left behind.
Social media now shapes identity, aspiration and influence. Gender-based violence is part of the country's daily public vocabulary. Young people's relationships with money, celebrity, faith, family and power increasingly unfold both online and offline.
The official release describes Let’s Rise as a 13-part drama set in Katlehong and built around young women navigating ambition, relationships, identity, family expectations, power, intimate partner violence, mental health and community action. It premieres on SABC1 on Sunday, 30 August at 19:30.
Yet the more interesting question is not whether South Africa still remembers Soul City.
It is whether Soul City still knows how to speak to South Africa.
Keeping the DNA, changing the world
At the media launch, Viranova put that question directly to Kgomotso Matsunyane and writer Brent Quinn: Soul City has such a significant history in South African television. What did you deliberately keep from that original DNA, and what did you have to reinvent for audiences in 2026?
For Matsunyane, the answer begins with understanding just how profoundly the environment around the series has shifted.
Previous incarnations of Soul City, she explained, often placed health information within spaces such as a clinic. The new series moves differently. Soul City Institute itself has evolved from a health and communications NGO into a social-justice organisation, while the young people it wants to reach now live in a culture profoundly shaped by social media.
That meant preserving the underlying method without reproducing the old series mechanically.
The new social centre is not a clinic but spaces such as a hair salon: somewhere young women naturally meet, talk, observe each other's lives and exchange information.
The task, Matsunyane said, was to “keep the old DNA while adapting to new technology and new relevant issues.”
That distinction is crucial.
Let’s Rise does not treat legacy as an aesthetic. The continuity is supposed to exist in the way the story works: research, recognisable characters, difficult choices, consequences and conversations capable of continuing after an episode ends.
Quinn described the writing process as collective and repeatedly contested, shaped by research, gender expertise, production, the SABC and Soul City.
But he also located one of the most significant changes in something earlier generations of Soul City could not have confronted in quite the same way: who controls the narrative in an age of social media.
One of the show's central figures, Samke, is an ambitious young influencer whose desire for a better life makes her vulnerable to an older, wealthy man. Her digital identity is not decorative to the plot. It becomes part of the struggle.
Quinn described a character who initially understands influence through beauty, visibility and aspiration before being forced to reconsider what influence itself can be used for.
It means Let’s Rise is not merely asking young viewers what content they consume.
It is asking who taught them what success looks like in the first place.
Five young women, not five lessons
That question matters because social-impact television carries its own creative danger.
If every character is constructed primarily to demonstrate a social problem, the person can disappear behind the message.
Viranova raised that concern with Soul City Institute CEO Phinah Kodisang: social-impact dramas can sometimes turn characters into vehicles for a message. How did the team make sure these young women still felt messy, contradictory and human?
Her answer returned repeatedly to aspiration.
These are young women who want things.
They want education. Money. Belonging. Love. Independence. Recognition. A better life.
And because they want those things, they sometimes choose badly.
“You look at some girl, she wants this life,” Kodisang explained. “And she sees herself getting it, and she's willing to do whatever it takes to get it.”
That is where the drama lives.
The official framing of the series similarly positions the young women not simply through the dangers confronting them, but through their capacity to recognise unhealthy norms and make different choices.
Samke's pursuit of opportunity becomes entangled with Rohfiwa, whose generosity, success and status conceal grooming, coercive control and exploitation.
Thando wants an education and the freedom to choose her future, while Pastor Menzi represents another kind of power: religious authority and social standing capable of being weaponised against someone taught to respect both.
Rhulani carries another pressure altogether. His storyline places mental health, trauma, masculinity and emotional vulnerability in conversation with one another.
Siza becomes an emotional anchor, building the Rise Club into a space where young women can find support and where collective action becomes something practical rather than rhetorical.
Dineo's relationship with charismatic radio personality DJ Thabz begins with the excitement of attention and attraction before jealousy, possessiveness and coercive control begin revealing a more dangerous imbalance.
None of these situations begins with the characters conveniently recognising what the audience is supposed to learn.
That is the point.
The series bible repeatedly emphasises the gradual nature of harm: grooming that looks like generosity; coercion disguised as affection; religious authority confused with moral authority; emotional pain hidden by expectations of masculinity; family conflict shaped by wounds adults have not resolved themselves.
Kodisang argued that the characters come from research into what young people are already living.
A girl in Katlehong, she suggested, could just as easily be a young woman in Kagiso or Mabopane.
The location changes.
The dynamics do not.
The violence before the violence
One of Let’s Rise' clearest interventions is its refusal to define abuse only by the moment it becomes physically violent.
The series is deeply concerned with what happens before that moment.
Control.
Manipulation.
Isolation.
Economic dependence.
Grooming.
Jealousy presented as love.
Authority presented as protection.
Silence presented as respect.
The press material describes the same approach: rather than delivering social issues as lectures, they emerge through relationships, decisions and consequences, including the smaller acts of manipulation and coercion that can precede gender-based violence.
That is also why Kodisang wants families to watch.
“When you watch it, don't just watch it as entertainment,” she told guests at the launch.
Her challenge was that a television drama should become an excuse for conversations that are otherwise avoided: between parents and daughters, young men and their friends, communities and religious institutions, couples and themselves.
A scene involving an 18-year-old woman being seduced by financial security, for example, should not simply produce suspense.
It should make somebody watching beside their daughter ask what economic vulnerability does to the idea of choice.
A character being groomed inside a church should force a harder question than whether the villain will eventually be exposed.
It should ask why status, age, faith or respectability can make dangerous behaviour harder to name.
Soul City does not want the conversation to end at the credits
This is perhaps the most important difference between Let’s Rise and a conventional issue-driven television drama.
The television series is only one part of the intervention.
Thabiso, who leads Soul City's parenting intervention, explained that the story will move into community radio, social media, Rise Clubs, schools, parenting programmes and community discussions.
Local radio partnerships are expected to continue conversations around what audiences see on television. Rise Club facilitators, young women and men working in communities, will connect storylines to the realities people are encountering across Ekurhuleni, including Tembisa, Duduza, Etwatwa and Vosloorus.
The organisation also plans to sustain its social campaign after the television run has ended.
The official release describes the wider ambition through the growing Soul Citizens Movement, positioning the series as an entry point into campaigns, activities and continued participation rather than a self-contained weekly programme.
Research remains central to that strategy.
Jacqui Hlongwane of SABC Education explained that the Soul City methodology involves going into communities, listening to people's experiences, testing scripts with audiences, gathering feedback, revising characters and testing again.
It is storytelling built through repetition: listen, create, test, learn, refine.
That process may also explain why Let’s Rise feels less interested in presenting flawless role models than in putting people inside recognisable contradictions.
Public television as more than a mirror
For Hlongwane, the significance of the show's return is inseparable from the purpose of public broadcasting.
She described Let’s Rise as arriving at a symbolic moment as SABC Education marks 30 years, reconnecting two institutions that have long shared a belief that education can happen through television as much as through a classroom.
But she also pushed against the idea that educational television requires condescension.
Speaking about SABC1's young audience, Hlongwane put it simply:
“They don't need for us to talk down to them; they need us to talk with them.”
That may be the entire creative test facing Let’s Rise.
Young audiences have become extremely skilled at detecting when a story is trying to teach them something.
The solution cannot be to hide the message more cleverly.
It has to be to create people whose desires, mistakes, contradictions and consequences are compelling enough that the conversation emerges naturally.
Hlongwane argued that public broadcasting should do more than reflect the country.
It should participate in shaping the country people believe is possible.
A television screen, in that formulation, can be a mirror, classroom, meeting place and catalyst at once.
“Let's rise” is meant to become a verb
Near the end of the launch, Kodisang turned the title into a chant.
“Let's rise to challenge harmful gender norms.”
The room repeated it.
“Let's rise to create an enabling environment for young women, young men and for our communities.”
Again, the room answered.
“Let's rise and take action to make South Africa a better country for young people.”
By then, the title no longer sounded like a television slogan.
That is clearly what Soul City wants.
Not simply recognition.
Participation.
The organisation is returning to television in a country where its original philosophy may be more difficult to execute than before. Audiences are fragmented. Social media competes with television for attention. Information moves instantly. Narratives are shaped by influencers, algorithms, political actors, brands and communities all at once.
Yet the argument underneath Soul City has barely changed.
Stories influence what societies learn to recognise as normal.
And if that is true, storytelling is never entirely harmless.
Let’s Rise enters that battle deliberately.
It does so through a girl who wants a better life and mistakes access for opportunity. Through another who wants to belong in church. Through a young man carrying pain he has not been taught how to name. Through a relationship whose danger is initially difficult to distinguish from excitement. Through a community organiser stubborn enough to believe that ordinary people can change the conditions around them.
The official release describes the return as a new generation carrying forward Soul City's commitment to entertainment-education and social change.
The larger challenge will be whether viewers recognise enough of themselves inside that generation to keep talking once Sunday night's episode is over.
Because for Soul City: Let’s Rise, the broadcast is only the beginning.
Soul City: Let’s Rise premieres on SABC1 on Sunday, 30 August 2026 at 19:30.
Reporting basis: Based primarily on Viranova’s reporting from the Soul City: Let’s Rise media launch, including direct questions and responses from Soul City Institute CEO Phinah Kodisang, Kgomotso Matsunyane, writer Brent Quinn, SABC Education’s Jacqui Hlongwane and members of Soul City’s community-intervention team. The reporting also draws on the series’ official release and story material supplied to Viranova. Premiere information and the 13-part format were cross-checked against Soul City Institute’s current public announcements and television scheduling. Soul City Institute is promoting the return as the franchise’s first new television drama in 12 years, with Let’s Rise premiering on SABC1 on Sunday, 30 August 2026 at 19:30.
Story index Key points, people & topics
Key points & topics
- After more than a decade away from South African television, Soul City returns with a new generation of characters, a changed media landscape and an old conviction: stories can do more than entertain.
- Soul City is returning to South African television after more than a decade away. But Let’s Rise is not interested in recreating its past: it is asking whether research-driven public television can still shape how a new...
Frequently asked Answers from the desk
What is Soul City: Let’s Rise?
Soul City: Let’s Rise is a 13-part South African television drama carrying the Soul City entertainment-education model into a new generation of characters and social issues.
When does Soul City: Let’s Rise premiere?
It premieres on Sunday, 30 August 2026 at 19:30.
What channel is Soul City: Let’s Rise on?
The series airs on SABC1.
Where is Soul City: Let’s Rise set?
The new drama is set in Katlehong in Gauteng.
How many episodes are in Soul City: Let’s Rise?
The series consists of 13 episodes.
What issues does Soul City: Let’s Rise explore?
The series explores ambition, relationships, identity, family expectations, social-media influence, intimate partner violence, coercive control, grooming, mental health, masculinity and community action.
How is Let’s Rise different from the original Soul City?
The team says the research-driven entertainment-education method remains intact, but the environments, technology, characters and social pressures have been updated for young audiences in 2026.
What role does social media play in Let’s Rise?
Social media is built into the characters’ understanding of status, aspiration and influence, particularly through Samke’s storyline as a young influencer.
Does the series only focus on physical violence?
No. Let’s Rise also examines behaviours that can precede physical violence, including manipulation, isolation, economic dependence, grooming, jealousy and coercive control.
What is the Rise Club in Soul City: Let’s Rise?
The Rise Club becomes a community space where young women can support one another and translate collective action into something practical.
Credibility & transparency How this story is reported
- Content type
- News
- Verification
- Attended by Viranova
- Reporting basis
- Based primarily on Viranova’s reporting from the Soul City: Let’s Rise media launch, including direct questions and responses from Soul City Institute CEO Phinah Kodisang, Kgomotso Matsunyane, writer Brent Quinn, SABC Education’s Jacqui Hlongwane and members of Soul City’s community-intervention team. The reporting also draws on the series’ official release and story material supplied to Viranova. Premiere information and the 13-part format were cross-checked against Soul City Institute’s current public announcements and television scheduling. Soul City Institute is promoting the return as the franchise’s first new television drama in 12 years, with Let’s Rise premiering on SABC1 on Sunday, 30 August 2026 at 19:30.
- Sources & context
- The supplied series material describes Let’s Rise as a 13-part Katlehong-set drama dealing with ambition, identity, family expectations, power, intimate partner violence, mental health and community action. Viranova’s launch interviews add important context around the creative method: the team deliberately retained Soul City’s research-driven entertainment-education model while adapting its characters, social spaces and conflicts to a generation shaped by social media. The original Soul City had a long history of using drama to address HIV/AIDS, healthcare, sexual violence, financial literacy and other public-interest issues. Soul City Institute’s own archive confirms Series 12 returned to SABC1 in 2014 with storylines covering primary healthcare, maternal and infant care, contraception, sexual assault and financial literacy. Let’s Rise extends the intervention beyond television. The launch reporting describes plans involving community radio, social media, Rise Clubs, schools, parenting programmes and continued community mobilisation after the television run ends.
- Primary source
- Soul City Institue
Edited under our Editorial Standards and How We Report process. Spotted an error? Open the correction form below, or email corrections@viranova.co.za.
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Filed by Viranova Entertainment Desk for the Entertainment desk · Katlehong, Gauteng, South Africa. Published 28 Aug 2026.
Sources
Primary material
Viranova obtained, attended or witnessed this directly.
- Viranova attended the Soul City: Let’s Rise media launch and interviewed members of the creative, organisational and broadcasting teams about the series’ return and social-impact methodology Viranova launch reporting accessed 28 August 2026
- Kgomotso Matsunyane said the new series aims to keep Soul City’s old DNA while adapting to new technology and issues relevant to young people in 2026 Viranova interview with Kgomotso Matsunyane accessed 28 August 2026
- Brent Quinn said the writing process was shaped collaboratively through research, gender expertise, production, SABC and Soul City input Viranova interview with Brent Quinn accessed 28 August 2026
- Phinah Kodisang said the young women in Let’s Rise are driven by recognisable aspirations including education, money, belonging, love, independence and recognition rather than being constructed only as vehicles for social messages Viranova interview with Phinah Kodisang accessed 28 August 2026
- Jacqui Hlongwane said the Soul City methodology involves community research, audience testing, script feedback and repeated refinement of characters and stories Viranova interview with Jacqui Hlongwane accessed 28 August 2026
- Soul City plans to extend the Let’s Rise story beyond television through community radio, social media, Rise Clubs, schools, parenting programmes and community discussions Soul City: Let’s Rise launch material and Viranova reporting accessed 28 August 2026
- Soul City: Let’s Rise is a 13-part drama set in Katlehong dealing with ambition, relationships, identity, family expectations, intimate partner violence, mental health and community action Soul City: Let’s Rise release material supplied to Viranova accessed 28 August 2026
Secondary material
Reported first by another publication or organisation, and credited here.
- Soul City Institute says Soul City: Let’s Rise premieres on SABC1 on Sunday 30 August 2026 at 19:30 Soul City Institute for Social Justice accessed 28 August 2026
- Soul City Institute describes Let’s Rise as a 13-part production made with Mindset Concept and backed by What Works and UK International Development Soul City Institute for Social Justice accessed 28 August 2026
- Soul City Series 12 returned to SABC1 in 2014 with storylines covering healthcare, contraception, sexual assault and financial literacy Soul City Institute for Social Justice accessed 28 August 2026
- Soul City Institute describes the franchise as having historically used entertainment-education to address HIV and AIDS, gender-based violence, discrimination, substance abuse and women’s empowerment Soul City Institute for Social Justice accessed 28 August 2026
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