DStv SuperSport slashes Afrikaans commentary
Trade union Solidarity has questioned why SuperSport, and the new group owner of MultiChoice, France’s Canal+, has scaled back Afrikaans-language commentary on DStv.
In an open letter, it cited the recent example of the South African national cricket team’s ongoing tour of New Zealand, where Afrikaans commentary for the games is no longer available.
According to the latest figures from the 2022 National Census, approximately 6.5 million people in South Africa are first-language Afrikaans speakers.
“Without any public consultation, a decision was made that the only commentary language for the tour would be English,” said Pieter Jordaan, head of news and publicity at Solidarity.
Jordaan asked SuperSport who in the broader group structure made the decision to cut Afrikaans commentary, at a time when Canal+ executives have reaffirmed their commitment to local content.
“It was indicated that the group’s strategy will rely on greater investment in local content and stronger relationships with local markets,” he said.
David Mignot, Canal+ Africa CEO, previously said that it would make no sense for them to reduce the content made in Afrikaans and Zulu.
“It would be counter-strategic and counterproductive. So that is absolutely not what we will do,” he said.
Concerns were mounting that Canal+ would scale back locally produced series and movies and replace them with locally dubbed versions of international series.
It announced that KykNET would run an Afrikaans-dubbed version of the popular Paramount+ series Landman.
According to Jordaan, the decision to scale back local language content on DStv is “difficult to understand.”
He said viewers in higher socio-economic segments prefer content in their mother tongues, and removing these options from notable live sports like national cricket is a financial mistake.
This is especially the case amid a tough financial position for MultiChoice and a mass exodus of its subscribers in South Africa.
Since March 2023, MultiChoice has lost 2.8 million subscribers, bringing its total to 14.4 million as of December 2025.
The first subscribers to depart the platform were its high-value Premium users, who dropped subscriptions in droves in 2016 following the local launch of Netflix.
In response, MultiChoice resorted to pushing its more accessible “Compact” and “Access” tiers, but even these segments have struggled with subscriber retention.
“Afrikaans-speaking viewers make up a relatively small portion of the total population, but they are overrepresented in the pay-television market,” Jordaan said.
He explained that this is because the Afrikaans community is strongly represented in the middle- and higher-income brackets.
He attributed the commercial success of the Afrikaans-only channel KykNET to these viewers, saying that it, alongside SuperSport, is among DStv’s most advertising-valuable channels.
Solidarity has reached out to MultiChoice to ask why it has decided to remove Afrikaans-language commentary from sporting matches.
DStv slowly winds down Afrikaans commentary
Jordaan alleged that MultiChoice has slowly reduced Afrikaans-language broadcasts on SuperSport to a “second-tier product.”
He said Afrikaans commentary teams were rarely present at important games during the recent SA20 cricket tournament and several cricket events broadcast before that.
“Afrikaans commentators were seldom, if ever, present at the ground alongside their English (or isiXhosa) counterparts to provide live analysis,” he said.
“To treat the Afrikaans viewing community in this way, by offering a product that is of a secondary standard, inevitably raises questions about SuperSport’s attitude towards its Afrikaans audience.”
During those events, Afrikaans commentary was still available, just not with the live broadcasters. During the Proteas’ latest tour of New Zealand, there is no Afrikaans commentary option.
“The new group owner, Canal+, has repeatedly emphasised that the future of pay television lies in strong local content, local languages and loyal local audiences,” Jordaan says.
“Afrikaans content is one of the clearest examples of exactly such an audience: stable, loyal, and willing to pay for quality content.”
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