Aahana Swrup
‘The Polygamist’ is a South African series where one man’s rampant infidelity brings numerous lives to near-ruin. Joyce Gomora has been married to Jonasi for a good 20 years. However, years of this seemingly perfect marriage are shattered when she learns about Matipa, his apparent mistress. Yet, instead of taking the easy and disadvantageous way out by divorcing him, she decides to raise the ante by offering to enter polygamy with her husband and accept his recent lover as her sister-wife. Consequently, as this marriage devolves out of control, Joyce learns things about her husband that she’s never known. This includes a string of affairs, secret relationships, and more. Once all the bets are off and Jonais’ reality is out in the open, the descent to hell arrives quickly, for the husband but perhaps for the first wife as well. SPOILERS AHEAD!
The Polygamist Recap
Five years before his death, Jonasi’s marriage with Joyce began to come apart at the seams. A year after the latter gave birth to their third child, her husband began to pull away. Although he uses his career as a self-made CEO as an excuse, he’s really carrying out an extramarital affair with Matipa, a social-climbing employee at his company. When the wife confronts the mistress in a violent altercation, Jonasi decides to move in with his new lover, leaving his wife and kids alone. Despite all of this, Joyce continues to put out the image of a perfect marriage to the public. Nonetheless, this is threatened when her husband refuses to attend their 20th wedding anniversary celebration and instead serves her divorce papers. Still, Joyce manages to use her connections to compel him to stay in the marriage for the sake of his career.
To her surprise, in the aftermath of their anniversary party, Jonasi ends up coming home with her and sleeping with her. The next morning, he settles back into their old home and into their family dynamic as if the past year hadn’t happened. While his wife and kids are confused, his mistress grows more and more restless. However, when she tries to pester him about his behavior, he ends things with her, insisting that he wants to go back to his old life. Only, this return doesn’t last too long. A few months later, Joyce discovers that her husband had started up his affair with Matipa, who is now the mother of his two twin daughters. Initially, Joyce has a really hard time accepting that she has been made to be a fool yet again. However, she refuses to let her husband’s infidelious streak rob her of her wealth and reputation. Therefore, she makes a surprising proposition.
Joyce agrees to welcome Matipa and her kids into their family by making her Jonasi’s second wife. However, while she becomes the biggest cheerleader of polygamy in front of the cameras, the dynamic between her, Jonasi, and the second wife remains disastrous. Eventually, things only worsen when Sarah, Jonasi’s presumed niece, drops a bombshell on Joyce and the rest of the family. As it turns out, her mother, Essie, isn’t actually the CEO’s brother’s wife. Instead, she’s his wife, whom he had married in secret shortly after his first marriage. All this time, he has been hiding this family away from Joyce and his kids, neglecting Sarah in the process. Things arrive at a new low when another world-stopping discovery comes out in the open. While all of this drama has been unfolding amongst his three wives, Jonasi has been having an affair with his own daughter’s young friend, Lindani.
In light of this revelation, both Joyce and Matipa begin to detest their husband and rebuff his relentless attempts at reconciliation. In turn, Jonasi grows violent and assaults both of his wives. Although the first wife manages to employ Gesh’s help to throw the husband out of her house, the other wife has no choice but to run away in search of a new start. In the process, she also has to abandon her twins, leaving them to be her sister-wife’s responsibility. Meanwhile, after being rejected by everyone, Jonasi returns to Lindani. Thus, the years pass with the unfaithful husband ignoring his wives to spend his days with the younger woman. Nonetheless, his hedonism only lasts so long before he’s diagnosed with an HIV infection. At the end of his life, when Lindani had squeezed him dry of his wealth and left him weak and dying, Joyce welcomed him back into her home, allowing him to live out the rest of his short life with his family.
The Polygamist Ending: How Did Jonasi Die?
The fact of Jonasi’s death is one of the first things that the narrative reveals. Thus, the entire show becomes an explanation of the events that brought the Gomora family to this dark time in their lives. Jonasi was a serial cheater, manipulator, and liar. He maintained a marriage of falsehood with Joyce for years, lying to her about how Essie is his sister-in-law when in reality she’s his second wife. However, the lies caught up to him in time as his infidelity began to grow bolder by the day. Eventually, he showed his true colors, turning to physical violence and financial control to hold power over the women in his life. Yet, all of that goes away when he catches HIV. Worse yet, despite the availability of medication to help manage the infection, he refuses to submit himself to treatment of any kind.
As a result, Jonasi just grows weaker by the day until he inevitably has to rely on someone else to take care of him. Unfortunately, his unforgivable actions and stubborn will have left him with only Lindani by his side. He’s too proud to accept help from Joyce, and he hates the township enough to rebuff Essie’s offer. However, unlike the latter, his current mistress has no real concern for his well-being. In fact, she’s only interested in milking him like a cash cow while leaving him to die without any proper care or nursing. Given her lack of care or love for him, she can only tolerate his sickness for so long before it becomes a burden on her, regardless of her indifference. Therefore, in his dying days, she decides to dump him on his old family.
Initially, Joyce and her children, Menzi and Mpume, are extremely hostile towards him as payback for his own unforgivable sins against them. Yet, in time, their family dynamic begins to mellow out. Nevertheless, right before his death, Jonasi makes a startling discovery. Apparently, his death isn’t just a twist of fate. Instead, it’s a planned revenge executed by his wife. Over the course of the series, Joyce considers killing her husband multiple times and even comes close to it once when she poisons him. However, in all these instances, she could’ve been directly incriminated for the murder. Therefore, by her fourth attempt, she has learned her lesson about maintaining her distance for plausible deniability.
Joyce’s menacing plan takes hold after Jonasi moves in with Lindani. Years ago, when Jonasi’s infidelity with Matipa was a new discovery, the first wife had set fire to the couple’s house in a fit of rage. In the aftermath, while she was in police lockup, she crossed paths with Lungi, another woman who had been wronged by her partner and sought to even the score. As it turns out, Joyce kept in touch with that woman all those years to finally employ her help for her final scheme. Lungi had HIV as a result of her boyfriend’s affairs. Joyce had paid the woman to knock on Jonasi’s door, pretend to be Matipa’s old friend, and seduce him into sleeping with her. Thus, the wife had orchestrated the affair, which infected her husband with the virus that finally killed him. In her eyes, it was poetic justice that Jonasi died as a direct result of his obsession with sex and infidelity.
Did Menzi Forgive His Father?
One of the weirder things that happens as Jonasi nears his death is the way his old family welcomes him back into their home. From physical violence to emotional betrayals and general apathy, he had hurt his wife, son, and daughter in a myriad of ways over the past few years. Menzi in particular seems to hate him to a lethal degree. The son usually became a punching bag for his father’s frustrations. However, that isn’t even the worst thing that Jonasi does to his son. Menzi harbors a long-standing and well-known crush on his sister’s friend, Lindani. Therefore, his father’s decision to stir up an affair with her comes as a particularly heartbreaking blow for his kid.
For the same reason, it’s all the more surprising to see him spending time with his old man, drinking beers, and having conversations like old friends. Nonetheless, much like his mother’s concern, this forgiveness and camaraderie also turn out to be a sham. One of the defining aspects that has prevented Joyce from going through with a divorce from Jonasi has been the legal and financial elements of their separation. Even though her support has been foundational to her husband’s success, she only owns 50% of his wealth. This means that by ending their marriage, she will run the risk of robbing her children of their full inheritance.
Menzi’s last-minute absolution of his father is a solution to the same problem. When Jonasi returns to the old Gomora household, he’s initially treated to hostility. Over time, this hostility becomes subdued, but it’s only in pursuit of a different goal. Before her husband dies, Joyce wants to ensure that she finally transfers all his wealth to her or her children’s names. Thus, she instructs Menzi to butter up his father and put on a show of forgiving him and finally seeing his way. By doing so, the son successfully manipulates his father into changing his will and leaving every penny of his wealth in Menzi’s name. Thus, in the end, Joyce ensures her husband dies while she controls the flow of his money and success.
Was Joyce Happy at Her Husband’s Death?
Joyce and Jonasi’s relationship, much like other dynamics in the series, proves to be uniquely complicated. Despite the tragedies and the hurt that he puts her through, the wife continues to hold a torch for her husband and his promised reform. She believes that he can fix the error of his ways and return to her even after she learns about his affair with Matipa. After the latter’s pregnancy, she pitches the idea of polygamy as a last-ditch effort to keep her family together. Nonetheless, lines are eventually crossed. From the revelation of Essie’s marriage to Jonasi to the latter’s violent and abusive attack on her, slowly but surely, it becomes clear that her husband is past the point of return.
Still, when Jonasi is on his deathbed, Joyce allows him back into their home, takes care of him, and attempts to make his dying days comfortable and happy. On some level, her daughter, Mpume, even genuinely forgives her father. Therefore, one can’t help but wonder if the same goes for his first wife. When she first hears news of his death, she bursts out in tears and screams as if the world has shifted under her feet. Yet, a smile of relief can be seen on her face on the tail end of this emotional reaction. Later revelations of Jonasi’s plot to have her husband infected with HIV and her scheme with Menzi only confirm what this smile suggested. Joyce never forgave her husband for his heinous behavior. In truth, she had just been biding her time, waiting to finally be gladly rid of Jonasi in the end.
What Happens to Lindani?
In the aftermath of his death, Jonasi doesn’t simply leave a widow and a couple of kids. Instead, he leaves behind three widows, five kids with different mothers, and a mistress. Among them, Essie seems to be the only one who harbors true grief over his passing. Matipa seems to have well and truly moved on from the dark chapter of her life featuring her husband and is happy to be able to return to her kids’ lives now. Joyce is similarly celebrating finally being rid of her husband. This leaves only Lindani, whose loss is more fiscal than emotional. Jonasi preyed upon Lindani when she was a young girl, the same age as his daughter.
Therefore, in many ways, she threw her life away to be with him and eventually came to detest him for it. However, his illness gave her the opportunity to similarly exploit him by only using him as a credit card. However, she had assumed that in his death, the assets she had secured for herself throughout their relationship would remain hers. This changes when he leaves his entire inheritance to his son. Therefore, Lindani gains a new target and an easy one at that. Menzi has always been in love with Lindani, and he had dreamt about making her his wife. Thus, despite the years of estrangement, she is able to corner him in his vulnerable state and seduce him. In the end, it seems Lindani’s involvement with the Gomora family isn’t over as Menzi becomes her new entry point into the family’s wealth.
Read More: Where is The Polygamist Filmed? All Shooting Locations
