Even when Deon Meyer’s Trackers book was adapted for screen by M-Net, there wasn’t this much attention paid to the casting choices. In my years of reporting about the South African TV industry, I had never come across such heated debate. Dudu Busani-Dube with Hlomu & Mqhele in The WifeĪs IOL’s Buhle Mbonambi put it, “No other South African series had garnered that much attention on who was cast in the roles before. And that was before Showmax announced they were adapting the series of books that made her name – Hlomu the Wife, Zandile the Resolute and Naledi His Love – into their first Showmax Original telenovela, unleashing the most heated casting debate South Africa has ever seen.

The Johannesburg Review of Books calls Dudu “a publishing phenomenon.” She’s become the face of self-publishing in South Africa, having topped the Exclusive Books charts, and landed four books simultaneously in the Nielsen Bookscan SA bestseller list for July 2021. With the first three episodes dropping tomorrow, here’s what author Dudu Busani-Dube has to say.

The Wife is one of the most hotly anticipated shows in South Africa, with ‘fan anticipation’ being like nothing Showmax has seen before.

Hlomu book series