Recently, the winner of the 2026 Big Brother Mzansi reality TV show, Liema Pantsi, returned home to scenes of euphoric celebration at King Phalo Airport in KuGompo City.
She was welcomed as a heroine after spending weeks inside a highly controlled house under constant surveillance.
Crowds gathered and celebrations erupted; you would have been forgiven for thinking this was the homecoming of a victorious sports champion or a national hero.
This moment was framed as the triumphant end of a remarkable journey.
The Big Brother show is built on relentless surveillance, manufactured intimacy between strangers, emotional and romantic performances for the camera, and alcohol‑fuelled conflicts designed to boost drama and ratings.
We are repeatedly told that succeeding in this artificial environment is not only worthy of applause, but something to admire, emulate, and even take national pride in.
I beg to differ. But first let me clarify.
This is not a critique of the individuals who emerge victorious from the Big Brother house.
Winners such as Pantsi do not cheat the system, they master it.
They enter the house and play the game by its rules, endure its pressures, perform its rituals, and walk away with life‑changing prize money.
There is nothing wrong about them winning, nor about the joy it brings to their supporters. My issue is with the structure and symbolism of the spectacle itself.
When reality TV winners are welcomed home like liberation heroes or sports stars from international competitions, a powerful message is sent that reward and success no longer have to be tied to any service or contribution.
Being seen matters more than being useful. It feeds a culture, now amplified by TikTok, where everyone is desperate to be seen doing something, anything, rather than quietly learning, building, or mastering a skill.
Thus, success begins to look less like effort and progress, and more like attention and applause.
They do little to solve real problems or build lasting skills and are certainly not a journey that most young people should be encouraged to copy
Big Brother’s biggest impact is not really entertainment; it is how it cleverly repackages idleness as aspiration.
They lock up impressionable contestants in a house, not to compete for any creative ideas, learning or innovation, but for how long they can endure confinement, how they look under constant cameras, and how well they can pull votes through personality, alcohol-induced conflicts or romantic dramas.
These traits may bring popularity in the age of social media. But they are hardly the foundations of social progress.
They do little to solve real problems or build lasting skills and are certainly not a journey that most young people should be encouraged to copy.
In a country where millions of young people are unemployed not because they lack ambition, but because opportunities are scarce, the show blurs the line between chance and achievement.
For a generation battling with fewer real pathways into meaningful living, Big Brother offers an illusion.
It sells the fantasy that sitting in a locked house under constant surveillance is a meaningful pathway to success, something young people should look forward to and organise their dreams around. That is a fallacy.
For millions of young people in SA, certainly in the Eastern Cape, the real journey to success is anything but glamorous.
It is about surviving unemployment, pushing through broken schools and fractured families, living with poor and failing infrastructure, non-existent service delivery, limited support, and carrying the daily weight of deep inequalities.
This is the hard, untelevised reality that many young people wake up to every day.
To place that lived experience alongside weeks spent bored in a luxury house, fully catered for and cut off from real social struggles, is not just tone‑deaf, it is deeply insulting.
Sadly, the big business of content creation and reality television is driven by money and ratings.
Platforms chase audiences by any means necessary, even when the social damage is obvious, they simply do not care.
However, a country facing SA’s challenges cannot afford to confuse celebrity with significance.
Let us celebrate real heroes whose journeys inspire hope, and whose success is rooted in service and contribution.
Influential media platforms such as Big Brother should amplify stories of people who expand knowledge, heal communities, create jobs, defend truth, or imagine new futures.
Their paths are slower, far less glamorous, and not televised.
They don’t trend and have no political connections. But they are real, and they matter.
If we are going to ask anything of young people, let it be to pursue purpose, discipline and courage, not simply the ability to endure the gaze of a camera.
Thami Dickson, media professional and commentator on current affairs
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