“At the beginning, I thought we were digging a deep hole for ourselves, as people feel so passionately about this character,” says Angus Gibson, the director and co-creator of South Africa’s biggest-ever production, Shaka iLembe. The character in question is King Shaka, or ShakakaSenzangakhona, the most famous of the Zulu kings who ruled in a pre-colonial era. A hugely important figure in South Africa’s Zulu culture, he has often been portrayed in Western media as a brutal warlord, a contrast to the tough military and political leader that most scholars agree he was. The desire behind the making of the series…