On Sunday evening, the South African version of hit British reality show, Love Island hit our screens – however, the highly anticipated show was met with criticism when an almost exclusively white line-up was revealed.
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In the picture, which was posted on the show’s Twitter page, only two participants on the show were black while six of the participants were white and two others were coloured. This angered many people because of the lack of diversity, particularly for a country that has a majority black population.
Soon the hashtag #LoveIslandOrania topped the Twitter trends list where many called out the show for a lack of diversity.
In a statement sent to TRUELOVE, a DSTV representative said: “We pride ourselves in reflecting diversity and inclusion for all our shows, including Love Island. The many channels and thousands of program hours we produce are testament to this,” the statement said.
“Viewers can be assured that this will become more apparent in future episodes of Love Island SA. We hope viewers will keep watching to enjoy the new stars of the show who will be arriving over the next few days. We understand viewers’ disappointment in relation to the production quality and would like to apologise for the technical issues experienced on Sunday and are working really hard to resolve them.”
Taking to their Twitter page, the show also shared a sneak-peek of the new Islanders who all seem to be black.
The show’s lack of diversity in its initial casting also made international headlines with the UK’s Metro publication and CNN reporting on the matter.
