Takalani Sesame ("Takalani" means "Be Happy" in Venda) is the South African version of the children's television program Sesame Street, premiering in 2000 and co-produced by Sesame Workshop and South African partners.
According to Sesame Workshop, Takalani Sesame is a "uniquely South African interpretation of the Sesame model, engaging children and their parents and promoting basic school readiness, literacy, numeracy, and health and hygiene." The series also has a special focus on HIV/AIDS awareness and seeks to introduce HIV/AIDS safety while promoting tolerance and reducing stigma.
Like other international versions of the show, Takalani also features dubbed scenes from the American version that only feature Muppet characters, in addition to its own original material. Since some people in South Africa do not have access to television, Takalani is also broadcast as a radio show. Both versions of the show incorporate all of South Africa's 11 national languages in its curriculum,note and is aired in 5 of them, with the same episode in different languages on different weekdaysnote .
The main Muppet characters created for this series include:
- Moshe, a large, yellow-beige coloured meerkat and this show's analogue to Big Bird. Moshe loves the environment and is constantly finding homes for lost plants, including weeds, and is very careful about where and how he walks.
- Zikwe, a blue monster who tends to be impatient and often acts on impulse, but is eager to help others.
- Elmo, a three-year old red monster, and the Breakout Character on the US show. See here for Elmo's character sheet.
- Zuzu, a six-year-old purple monster. She's described as a perfectionist with a strong sense of drama, who loves exploring the world around her.
- Kami, a cheerful, wise and energetic girl who just so happens to be HIV-positive. The creation of her character was intended to reduce stigma concerning the disease, in a country where an estimated 19% of South Africa's population aged 15–49 have HIV/AIDS. Kami's purpose, however, was widely misreported by American right-wing politicians and Moral Guardians, who believed that the character was intended for the American version of the show. Despite this, Kami remains one of the show's most popular characters.
This series provides examples of...
- Adaptation Name Change: Elmo was formerly named Neno on Takalani. It was changed in preparation for the series' 20th anniversary in 2020, and to bring the name of the character in line with the US series and other international co-productions.
- In Sesame Square, a fellow African co-production based in Nigeria, Kami and Zikwe are main characters, although the latter is renamed to Zobi.
- The Alleged Car: For the first 20 years of the series, Zikwe owned a taxi that he could never seem to fix. However, by the show’s twentieth anniversary, it’s fully functional and is even given a new coat of paint.
- Drama Queen: Zuzu can act this way sometimes.
- Friend to All Children: All the Muppet characters count, but especially Elmo.
- Gentle Giant: Moshe definitely counts.
- Happily Adopted: Kami lives with the street's resident mother figure and her husband, as well as their two human children (one of whom was also adopted).
- Loyal Animal Companion: In the early days of the series, Moshe had a pet worm called Kupukeji. She mysteriously disappeared sometime after the second or third season, with no mention of her whereabouts.
- Show Within a Show: Some episodes feature truncated episodes of Elmo's World, dubbed over by Elmo's South African Muppet performer and some South African kids. Certain segments of Elmo's World, such as those featuring the Noodle family, are typically edited out.
- Tragic AIDS Story: Played with in connection to Kami. She's HIV-positive, and her mother died of the disease before the series, but she's otherwise perfectly healthy.
