South African Children’s Program Includes New Languages

JOHANNESBURG/NEW YORK,
August 7: Sesame Workshop’s award-winning South African children’s show Takalani
Sesame has added four new
languages —Sesotho,
Xitsonga, isiXhosa and Afrikaans—for the program’s fifth season to debut
on SABC this August.

Takalani Sesame will include new characters and celebrity guests
for the new season, which is currently in production. This season sees Ma
Dimpho's younger brother, Vinnie, returning home after being away at college
where he studied information technology. Vinnie introduces the Muppet friends
to new things like e-mail and the Internet and creates a mobile library. A new
animal, Maria the camel, also will be introduced. A special episode celebrating
Earth Day will feature a concert in the park with neighborhood children planting
a tree.

Charles Owen, the head
of the children’s genre at SABC, said: “We believe that children's learning and
development is much stronger at a young age when they build on what’s
familiar—therefore providing content in the mother tongue is an educationally
sound practice. In season five we focus more on the marginalized languages such
as Tsonga to increase our audience reach. Takalani allows children to dream and provides first class
innovative content that allows children to celebrate their childhood through
learning, loving, playing, laughing and realizing their potential.”

—By Jackie Stewart