Bitch, please! I'm Khanyi Mbau. Lesley Mofokeng
all that attention. As Khanyi puts it, looking back at that exciting time and the first flush of success: “I knew that millionaires were not in school. Teachers are not millionaires. My father would castigate me. He told me to take my school work seriously but I knew I was meant for bigger things. School simply was not for me. I was passionate when I said this to my father. I believed it – I knew my destiny.”
As she grew older one thing did get her attention: Grant Solomons, the fastest runner in school. He was the “it” boy. Well built with broad shoulders, thunder thighs and the cut calf muscles of a committed athlete, he was Khanyi’s first genuine crush. Even better, he liked her too.
Ever proactive, Khanyi bought him a rose and sent him a love letter on Valentine’s Day of 1997 in which she declared her undying love and everything that had to do with the birds and the bees. But her mother wouldn’t allow her to attend the Valentine’s Day dance with Grant, so he didn’t get to put the special chain he’d bought for her around her neck that night. Finally they shared their first kiss a while after Valentine’s Day. Grant was to be her first boyfriend, but not her last.
Her sudden fame was a mixed blessing at school. There was inevitably a lot of jealousy when Khanyi became the school’s “celebrity” but even then she was good at owning it. Khanyi didn’t make a big deal out of her fame. She seemed to wear it well, as if it was a natural event – something she had deserved all her life.
So when students said mean things about her, she held her head high. She knew they would trade places with her in a heartbeat. It was early training in managing envy. Khanyi was always good at looking like she was meant to be the one getting all the attention. It was effortless to her. The fame was a good way to notice who was worth getting to know. If other students couldn’t handle it, then they really weren’t meant to be in her life.
Not that Khanyi’s grandmother Gladys took much notice of her granddaughter’s “fame”. The Mbau household remained as strict as ever. Despite being on TV in the lounge, Khanyi was still expected to clean it. She wasn’t excused a single chore. Gladys carried on as if nothing had changed and Khanyi was furious but eventually came to depend on that normality. She would always be a kid in her grandmother’s home and that was comforting in the crazy times to come.
That early validation remains a huge emotional resource for Khanyi. It drives her. She used the fact that she wasn’t like the other kids in a positive way. It became a source of strength and self-esteem – the basis of her sense of entitlement. “I’ve never felt inferior,” she says,“despite all the snide remarks, bullying and mean stares. I had it in my head that I stand out. I grew up with that mentality.”
When Khanyi turned nine she moved in with her mother, who had bought an apartment at Dudley Heights in Hillbrow. Khanyi said goodbye to her beloved grandparents and left ekasi for the big city.
Her mother’s social circle and lifestyle was very much of the era. Mandela was free, the ANC was unbanned and the country would never be the same. It was the eve of the watershed 1994 non-racial elections. Black people would soon be going places fast. Rising up in business and enjoying new opportunities. Khanyi was surrounded and influenced by her mother’s friends, who were ambitious, well-educated, independent women. This was the new South Africa.
You only had to look at Lynette and her sister Nikiwe’s nails to know they meant business. They were always shiny and immaculately manicured. They were up on the latest fashion trends. They partied with the celebrites of the day – popular actor and radio presenter Treasure Tshabalala and Metro FM DJs like Lawrence Dube and Stan Katz. Khanyi was exposed to the social life of celebrity early on.
“I was tossed around in that world as a little girl,” she says. “They’d carry me around on their shoulders to the music of Sankomota and I’d sing the words to the songs. They were the happening professionals on the block and I was running around at their parties.”
Lynette was glamorous and knew how to play the hostess. “At their soirees, my mom would change four times. She arrived in a dress, then a change of costume for dinner, a little number for drinks and then an after-party look. My mother was my Barbie doll. She had the most amazingly beautiful figure and she spoke so well. Growing up in that world and given what I saw on TV, I knew I wanted to be rich and famous.”
Khanyi was growing up and she needed a father more than ever. Moving towards her emotional teens she felt his absence in her life and longed to have a real bond with him. She envied her white classmates who spoke lovingly of their dads. She even colluded with her father to have her removed from Milpark Primary to a school closer to him. She became a school hopper and moved to Meredale Primary in the south of Joburg in Grade 7.
Khanyi had triumphed over the teasing at Milpark thanks to her outgoing personality, and her TV fame meant she was very much the queen of the cool clique at Milpark. At Meredale she had to start all over again. She had hoped her half-sister Thandeka, who was already there, could take care of her and introduce her to her circle of friends. But Khanyi was younger and new and Thandeka could only do so much. The TV star ended up feeling like an outsider.
But she had bigger problems. A tug of war was developing between her parents who had both married other people around the same time. The secret wish that her parents would get back together was gone. To make matters worse, her mother had a baby. Khanyi had been the only child, the centre of attention, for 10 years until this little creature with the button nose called Buhle appeared.
“It was a tough year for me,” she says. “My mother had a child and I didn’t think my father loved me that much. I moved schools and my TV work ended – I felt betrayed.”
Her new baby sister was a rival. She’d already gone through rivalry for affection with her father and his children. “I always felt like my father loved Thandeka more than me. She was academically inclined and excelled in class. She loved educational toys while I was into Barbies. But at least I bought them with my own money. Thandeka’s head was always buried in books.”
If only Khanyi had done the same. She failed Grade 7.
3. I hate jazz
The moment she hit her teens, Khanyi started to rebel against everyone and everything. She had piercings in her tongue, nose and belly button and once even shaved all her hair off. She wore skintight tops that would have made her grandmother faint.
“I even hated jazz which my grandparents loved so much and made me listen to. I felt they had disempowered me because I couldn’t sing along to Brenda Fassie, Senyaka, Chicco, Mercy Pakela and all the bubblegum music of that time. Something every other black kid could do at the school. All I knew was Frank Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ or Thelonious Monk. I blamed my grandparents for making me feel like a misfit . . . Of course, today I’m very grateful to them and I’m again a huge fan of jazz.”
Khanyi was an angry teenager. Not only was she unhappy that her mother had got married and had another child, but her raging teenage hormones also made her moody and unpleasant to have around. “I was so full of anger,” she says. “I hated my mother and I wanted her to leave me alone. I locked myself in my room and never wanted any company. I had good friends, I had bad friends. I was a law unto myself.”
She was belligerent, but while her friends drank and smoked, she never liked the taste of alcohol and cigarettes made her cough. The one forbidden thing she fell for was dope. She was exposed to marijuana by some of her friends at school, who all believed that smoking was hip. For her it was all about fitting in rather than about achieving the scintillating high associated with the green herb.
Khanyi was one for having a good time at any place where there was music. She would go out and not return home for days. “I hurt my mother and grandmother,” she says, shaking her head. “I put them through so much hell.”
She especially remembers the time she and her friend Liziwe Coka, who would be a contestant on Big Brother Africa