‘Sex and Pleasure’: All your South African sex questions answered

It has been about four weeks and we are at the halfway mark of Showmax’s latest sexy original project titled Sex and Pleasure. Over the past four weeks, writer Kim Windvogel and journalist Romantha Botha have set the topics and sought to speak to as many South African faces as they can about sex and sexuality. 

What South Africans get up to behind closed doors

Sex and Pleasure is a Showmax Original set to air once a week until 26 April 2023. 

The weekly episodes are hosted by Windvogel and Botha as they use the adults-only documentary series as a vehicle to take a broader look at what South Africans get up to behind closed doors, and, well, everywhere else too. 

The Citizen got the chance to sit down with the show’s creators to pick their brains about the docuseries and sex and sexuality in general.

Windvogel and Botha were joined by director Ayanda Duma who all brought their expertise to the table in different ways. 

How professional experience birthed the doccie 

Speaking to The Citizen, Botha explained that she was a journalist with years of multi-platform experience, most recently in television. She said her time working in TV journalism taught her to look for particular things when approaching a topic.

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“One day, I was watching a particular documentary and I saw so many loopholes in terms of fully telling the narrative of all South Africans when it comes to a particular topic,” explained Botha. 

When she initially conceptualised the idea, she thought of approaching it through the talk show format because she mainly wanted to give ordinary South Africans a platform to say their piece about the topic. 

After locking in the format, she then thought about who she would turn to in order to achieve her goal.

“I wanted to include people who are queer and people who are from the LGBTQIA community in it’s broader sense. I knew I didn’t have much leverage and enough people that I know and that’s where Kim came in.”

She approached Windvogel via direct message on social media and Windvogel, who had previously co-authored a book on Touch, Sex and Sexuality alongside Tiffany Mugo. 

Duma, on the other hand, came on board shortly after working on the South African leg of Planet Sex with Cara Delevigne (which is also available on Showmax).

As vast as the project was in terms of what it covered, Duma said she walked away from it feeling as though there was so much more to cover. 

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What she also brought to the table in her quest to bring the visual aspect of the project to life was illustrations which she says brought a lightness and a levity to the topic which she believes is “tied to the double-barrel” aspect of the show’s title and topics. 

Main intention 

Speaking of their aims for this project, Duma said that she wanted to demystify this everyday topic.

“To take things out from behind the curtain and bring it to the forefront. Because, ultimately that results… and you’ll see in our series, we try to push this theme or context that; knowing about things makes the experience better.”

She also wanted to highlight the separation of the concept of pleasure from sex. 

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“Another motive that the show has is to stop the separation between those two, hence the title.”

Windvogel shared her that her hope for the show was for everyone to walk away viewing sex as one of the main things that connect us as people, no matter what we believe in or how we live.

She also wanted viewers to look at the project in its entirety and see themselves in some way, shape or form because she learned that everyone not only thinks about sex in their own individual way, they also experience it in different ways. 

‘Sex and Pleasure’

The first episode of Sex and Pleasure features a diverse range of South Africans talking openly about their first experiences of sex and sex education. 

The episode is aptly called Clueless and viewers can expect to see the likes of Moonchild Sanelly talking about her first blowjob, Siv Ngesi talking about losing his virginity or Lesego Tlhabi (aka Coconut Kelz) talking about browsing porn on her school’s computers before she learnt to erase her search history. 

Showmax said that the first episode of Sex and Pleasure makes it clear that many South Africans simply aren’t prepared well enough. 

“Some of the interviewees weren’t even prepared for their first periods and pubic hairs, let alone their first sexual experiences.”

For many of the interviewees, sex is not something they ever discussed with their parents, or, in many South African homes, with the grandparents who were their primary caregivers. 

“We hear from a dad whose daughter is 21 but is still waiting for the right time to have the sex talk, which he hopes means she is not having sex yet. But according to a study of 10 000 South African pupils, 40% of teenagers have had sex – and 13% of those were under 14 years old. In 2021-2022, there were over 90 000 teenage births in the public sector alone.“

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If you don’t talk to your children about sex, someone else or something else will teach them instead, with Cosmopolitan magazine, porn, books, TV and graffiti all getting credit from interviewees. 

As Kerline Astre, a parent and sacred BDSM practitioner, says: “People who are parents know that you aren’t the only person raising your child”. 

Leaving this to your child’s school is risky. As interviewees say, sex education at schools has tended to focus more on sexually transmitted diseases than sexual pleasure, and has been better at explaining how to handle a condom than a clitoris. 

Additionally, queer sex often isn’t discussed at all. 

According to Dr Mpume Zenda, even studying to become a gynaecologist didn’t involve learning about sexual pleasure. 

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“There’s literally a blip of a chapter about sexual dysfunction, nothing more, nothing less,” she said. 

“The whole curriculum revolves around reproductive health, and yet the core of it, nobody really talks about.” 

Some of the Sex and Pleasure interviewees share stories that are every South African parent’s nightmare, of grooming and rape. 

“I’m sorry to say that unfortunately a lot of children who are not prepared properly do end up in the offices of lawyers like me,” said public attorney Sanja Bornman, a gender law and public policy specialist.  

”The more you learn about sex, the more you know about your body, the easier it is to identify when something is off, as well,” commented Lesego Tlhabi. 

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“The more we educate ourselves on these topics, even the fun stuff, that then helps you with the important stuff, which is knowing when you are a victim.”

The wide-ranging episode also chats to parents who were prepared for the sex talk, but didn’t expect the gender talk, and explores how to parent an intersex child.  

Each subsequent episode will explore tlof tlof in relation to a different topic: love, sex work, pills and potions, orgasm, disability, age, and spirituality. You can watch the show here.