Ahead of 'Strictly Come Dancing's' return to BBC BRIT, Johannes Radebe opens up about his township roots, chosen family, becoming a British citizen and stepping into the show's first-ever three-person presenting team.
Johannes Radebe, who steps into a new role as co-host of Strictly Come Dancing alongside Emma Willis and Josh Widdicombe. Picture: Supplied, BBC Studios Africa
When Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC BRIT (DStv Channel 120) on Sunday 27 September at 7pm, South African audiences will be watching one of their own step into the spotlight in an entirely new way. Johannes “JoJo” Radebe, who spent eight years dazzling the Strictly ballroom as a professional dancer, is now part of the show’s first-ever three-person presenting team, alongside Emma Willis and Josh Widdicombe, as the format kicks off its 24th season.
It’s the kind of full-circle moment that feels serendipitous when you’re familiar with JoJo’s life story, and in a candid conversation with The Citizen, he traced the line from the streets of Zamdela, the Free State township where he grew up, to a role that has him, in his own words, feeling “so at ease.”
The streets that made him
Having read his biography, JoJo: Finally Home, my first question for Radebe is how much of the performer the world sees today was shaped by home.
“Everything about JoJo was shaped in those streets of Zamdela,” he said, adding that the township is full of dancers who could do the job “with their eyes closed” but simply lacked opportunity. “I’m not lost, I’m from a community of people that are kind, so therefore if there’s anything that I’ve held on to, it’s the kindness of my people.”
That community-first framing runs through how he talks about ballroom and Latin dance existing in South African townships long before he ever set foot in a studio. He credits his late aunt, who did social dancing, for his first exposure, and pushes back on the idea that “cheese and wine” partner-dancing gatherings, a township tradition, weren’t a legitimate precursor to what he’d go on to do professionally.
“This exists, partner dancing exists amongst my people, and it’s been [there] forever,” he said.
Leaving home to chase a life with no map
Radebe has been open before about the sacrifices behind his career, and he returned to that territory in our conversation. He recounted leaving his family at 14 to move to Johannesburg and live with a house full of fellow students chasing the same improbable dream.
“There is no prospects where you come from. I aligned myself with people that could further what I was doing… I had to make that sacrifice,” he said of the decision, one his own parents initially doubted.
He spent the years that followed teaching dance, doing freelance work, eventually being scouted, and describes the circumstances as pure luck layered on hard graft, given how few professional pathways exist for dancers in South Africa. It’s a throughline familiar to readers of his 2023 memoir, a Sunday Times bestseller in which he first wrote at length about growing up in Zamdela and the “euphoric highs and all-time lows” of getting from there to the Strictly ballroom.
A landmark year, even by his standards
Radebe wasn’t exaggerating when he said he didn’t plan for 2026 to turn out the way it has. The year has seen him become a British citizen and make his full West End debut, reprising the role of Lola in Kinky Boots at the London Coliseum, after first taking on the part during the show’s UK and Ireland tour.
Asked what keeps him grounded through all of it, he simply says he never makes a move without calling his mother and his friends first. “They are the ones that hold the power to remind me who I am,” he said, adding that being “the first” in so many spaces has come with its own uncertainty. “There’s been doubt… do I belong? But I honestly, everything I do, I’m doing it for my people back home.”
Stepping into an institution
Taking on a hosting role on a 20-plus-year-old British institution is no small undertaking, and Radebe is candid about feeling the weight of it, while also refusing to perform a version of himself for the cameras.
Authenticity is the mandate he’s set for himself, but he’s careful, too, to manage expectations for viewers wary of change. “It’s the same cake, just different icing… nothing is going to change.” He name-checked outgoing hosts Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly directly, acknowledging the scale of what he and his co-hosts are stepping into: “We’ve got big boots to fill.”
BBC Studios’ own framing of the new season echoes that sense of continuity-with-change. Pierre Cloete, Vice President for Africa at BBC Studios, said in a statement that with Radebe, fellow South African judge Motsi Mabuse, and new professional dancer Lethabo Monametsi all featuring this season, “there’s an extra reason for South African audiences to tune in and enjoy an unforgettable new chapter of Strictly on BBC BRIT.”
Monametsi’s presence rounds out an unusually strong South African contingent this season. According to the press release announcing the show’s return, the Latin champion first discovered her love of dance through South Africa’s own version of Strictly Come Dancing before going on to win Dance Yo Dumo and build an international career – making her one of five new professional dancers joining the ballroom this year, alongside Aleksandra Isaeva, Cristian Priori, Maddie Ingoldsby and Mark Karmalita.
Bringing Africa to the ballroom floor
Wardrobe freedom is clearly a point of pride for Radebe, who says the show has let him shape his own look for years, and that hosting just gives him even more room to play.
“I love colour. Most importantly, I want to just celebrate my African, African, African fashion… it would be lovely to show the world what we are made of.”
The interview’s most heartwarming moment comes when Radebe reflects on what the Strictly platform has meant to him as a queer Black man from a South African township, building a life and a “relationship with the British public” thousands of kilometres from home.
“I was able to step into my destiny as a Black queer man,” he said. “I realise now that was shame that I’ve carried, a trauma that I’ve carried throughout my years. But all of that is off my shoulders now.”
He credits dance itself, and audiences’ response to it, with making that possible: “It fills my heart… I found my home, honestly, I found my home.”
Strictly Come Dancing premieres on BBC BRIT (DStv Channel 120) on Sunday 27 September at 7pm (SAST).
