Thursdays in September and October become ‘Documentary Days’ on M-Net Channel 101 from 4 September, with sport/crime documentary Dark Side of Glory and an extended exploration of South Africa’s biggest-ever corporate scam, Steinheist.
Dark Side of Glory premieres tonight, 4 September at 22:00, exploring the stories behind shocking cases of murder and unexplained deaths in the world of sport. Between 1998 and 2001, Joseph Ntshongwana starred for the Blue Bulls in the Currie Cup and Vodacom Cup. A decade later, he was arrested for killing four men with an axe, and wounding two others, which the series explores in its first episode.
The second episode takes viewers back to 2021, when the world of athletics was shocked to its core when three female athletes were murdered in six months in Kenya – including Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in her home, soon after clinching a world record in Germany.
Series director Arianna Perretta has explained of their hopes for the documentary that “… the public agree that, while these are raw and shocking stories, it is important that these cases are brought into the light and that we see positive outcomes and a real push for change”.
Dark Side of Glory is produced by CMG Productions, which won ‘Best Documentary’ at the 2023 Broadcast Digital Awards for The Footballer, His Wife and the Crash and was nominated for a 2024 True Crime Award for Football Fraudster.
Starting on 18 September at 22:00, Steinheist – based on Rob Rose’s 2018 book Steinheist: Markus Jooste, Steinhoff and SA's Biggest Corporate Fraud and produced by Devilsdorp; Tracking Thabo Bester; Rosemary’s Hitlist and School Ties creators IdeaCandy – delves deep into the biggest corporate scam in South African history.
The series premiered in 2022 with three episodes, looking at the story behind Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste’s resignation amid an investigation into accounting irregularities in the stock market darling. The investigation saw Steinhoff’s share price plunge by 90% in a week, wiping over R200-billion off the Johannesburg Stock Exchange – and off ordinary South Africans’ pensions and investments.
Now, the series comes to M-Net with two new episodes, which pick up the story a month after the documentary’s 2022 release, when the Reserve Bank seized R1.4-billion of Jooste’s assets. From his pursuit by German authorities to his record R475m fine from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, to his police summons to stand trial, the new episodes trace how the net tightened around Jooste in the build-up to his suicide on a rocky beach in Hermanus on 21 March 2024.
The first three episodes of Steinheist set a new Showmax record for the most first-day views of any documentary and the series went on to become the most-nominated documentary going into the SAFTAs, with director Richard Gregory and producer Elle Oosthuizen named the Sanlam Group Financial Journalist of the Year for 2022 – the first TV journalists to win the prize in nearly a decade. The duo also won the Broadcast: TV and Video category award.
“Steinheist is a fantastic, enthralling and frustrating watch; frustrating not in a bad way but in disbelief of what we (as a society) allow to happen and ultimately how money (which ultimately equates to how much power and influence you possess in the general scheme of things) determines how you are treated and more importantly, what you’re allowed to get away with,” wrote Thabiso Moploi for TWFLD to mark its premiere.
Catch Dark Side of Glory on 4 and 11 September at 22:00 and Steinheist from 18 September at 22:00, both on M-Net. Both documentaries are also available on DStv Stream, DStv Catch Up and Showmax.
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