The South African Netflix series "The Polygamist" became a surprising global hit. Following its June release, it quickly grew into a major viral sensation, both in South Africa and across the world, including in Kenya.
It reached number one on Netflix's charts in almost two dozen countries and broke into the Top 10 non-English TV list in over 60 countries, including the US, UK, and across South America and Eastern Europe.
The BBC and local media reported matatus in Nairobi painted with polygamist Jonasi Gomora's face or name. Gomora is played by actor S'dumo Mtshali.
There is a happy side story to "The Polygamist's" success. The series is based on Zimbabwean-born author Sue Nyathi's 2012 debut novel of the same name. After writing it, Nyathi faced constant rejections from traditional publishers who claimed local audiences wouldn't want to read about polygamy. Fourteen years after the book's release, it became a global hit on streaming, driving her physical book back onto the bestseller lists.
The popularity of the series also raises the question of whether polygamy is fashionable again. Fortunately, in Kenya, where its anti-hero star Jonasi Gomora was celebrated, we have some data.
The numbers, courtesy of the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), show that polygamy has been declining for decades. In 1989, 23 per cent of married women aged 15–49 (some rural and poor communities have child marriages) reported having co-wives.
Kenyan men who have children with several partners and reject the polygamist label describe themselves as "free men," not husbands of multiple wives.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
By 2003, that figure had fallen further, to 16 per cent. The KDHS 2022 found that the number had dropped sharply, to 9.2 per cent of married women aged 15–49 being in polygynous unions, with only 4.5 per cent of married men reporting two or more wives. There is no newer national survey showing a rebound.
The 2025 Kenya Population Situation Analysis still used the 2022 figures of 9.2 and 4.5 per cent, and I could not find a newer national survey showing a shift in favour of polygamy.
Many commentators, including the author Sue Nyathi, have noted that the fascination was less about polygamy and more about cheating and secrecy.
Old-school polygamy has been replaced by parallel, informal arrangements. "Baby mamas" (so-called side chicks) and "baby daddies" (men who have children with one or more women they are not married to, and often do not live with, as co-wives) are plentiful.
On July 18, 2026, the Daily Nation published a feature titled "Father to many, married to none: are you a baby daddy or a polygamist?", interviewing Kenyan men, including public figures, who have children with several partners and reject the polygamist label. They described themselves as "free men," not husbands of multiple wives. You just have to love these chaps; free men!
The bottom line is that Kenyans can paint Jonasi on a matatu and still not make more than one trip to a woman's parents' home to ask for their daughter's hand in marriage, or deliver 15 cows as bride price, where that is still practised.
The data shows that in Kenya, as in other African countries, polygamy falls sharply with education and rising wealth. It remains concentrated among older, poorer, less-educated, and more rural populations.
Polygamy is also competing with other trends. One of these, which some conservative Mothers' Union groups have rightly identified and rail against, is Premier League football. For many football-obsessed men, the choice is not between beautiful Mary, who has a nice little gap in her teeth, and Barbara, with the dimples, but between the match between Manchester United and Arsenal, and one of them.
Football no longer ends at 90 minutes. After that, there is the meet-up at the sports pub to discuss the game. Then the debate moves to social media, where the global football community battles over games, who caused the loss, the biased referee, the idiocy of VAR, and the need for a change of coach.
And then, a few days later, the Kenyan Arsenal fans have to drive in a convoy across the Ugandan border to meet up with the Arsenal fanatics in the city of Jinja.
This is often linked to the Kenyan manosphere, a loose ecosystem of online forums, influencers, podcasts, and content centred on men's issues, masculinity, dating, and gender roles. It often mixes self-improvement with "red pill" ideas that feminism has disadvantaged men and that women are manipulative or untrustworthy. Critics see it as misogynistic, and blame it for the rise in violence against women.
Taken together with things like shrinking spaces (you need quite some space to have many wives and children), record unemployment, and the fact that the present young generation is poorer than their parents, polygamy doesn't have much purchase with them.
Polygamy will not disappear soon, though. We simply have a society becoming ever more diverse. One in which Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship of Africa (PEFA) Bishop John Okinda, in Migori, over the weekend urged Christians to love and welcome homosexual people and atheists in church while still teaching that men should marry women.
The author is a journalist, writer and curator of the Wall of Great Africans. X@cobbo3
