"When we started talking on the phone, the first thing he told me was that he wanted a child with me, says Kelly Khumalo.
|||Controversial, yet popular, singer and actress Kelly Khumalo opened up in an unprecedented way on Real Talk with Anele on SABC3 this afternoon about her former lovers Molemo “Jub Jub” Maarohanye and slain soccer star Senzo Meyiwa, gossip surrounding her life, and more. Here’s PART ONE of our report on their in-depth conversation:
“I Google myself all the time! As much as you block out the bad, you want to know what people think of you, “ said Kelly Khumalo in an in-depth TV interview with host Anele Mdoda.
She went on to say that the media tend to focus on the bad, and “blow it out of proportion”, as opposed to focusing on the good, “inspirational” stories.
But for many years, the consistent theme in Khumalo’s life was controversy brought on by inappropriate and/or toxic relationships with men. And Mdoda did not shy away from these topics.
“We talked about marriage all the time”
On her controversial relationship with soccer star Senzo Meyiwa - who was killed in what was believed to be a botched robbery at Khumalo’s family home in Vosloorus in 2014 - she held nothing back. Avoiding the topic of Senzo’s wife Mandisa, Khumalo spoke at length about the “stages” her love affair with Meyiwa went through.
READ: Kelly pours her heart out about Senzo
“I’ve gone through so many stages where Senzo is concerned, I’ve been in love, I’ve been so mad to a point where I want to just go to the grave and dig him out and go, ‘Like, dude, you cannot do this’. Because just when we were at the phase of enjoying our lives, you decide to check out!
“What a waste of my efforts, what a waste of me wanting to stay in this relationship and nurture this relationship and then you decide to check out!”
This revelation about her grief and the anger she felt at losing her lover actually came after she dropped a proposal bombshell.
First, she recalled how things got very serious, very quickly - as far as Senzo was concerned.
He was a man on a mission.
“When we started talking on the phone, the first thing he told me was that he wanted a child with me, and I was like, ‘Dude, you don't know me - how dare you want that with me! I'm not at a place where I want a child; I'm putting myself together. I just came out of a very bad relationship. I'm not in a position to give anyone a child’. So when I told him I was pregnant he was like, ‘Yeah! I knew it!. And he had a name (for the child).
“He thought it was going to be a boy and he wanted to name him Sphamandla (Strengthen us) and I was like, ‘Dude, I'm not sure if I even want to keep this. I wasn't sure, really.”
“I was never sure, (but) God somehow said, ‘You are having this one. Whether you like it or not, you are having this one.”
She reiterated: “I had thoughts that I would maybe terminate this one, because I was at the place where I was not ready, but the thing is God wanted the child more than I did.”
Against Meyiwa’s instincts, the pair ended up welcoming a baby girl, Thingo, into the world.
When asked if the subject of marriage ever came up, she said: “We talked about marriage all the time.
READ: #TillDeathDoUsApart, says Kelly Khumalo
She recalls that one night after she had cooked dinner, he “proposed” to her. After taking a sip from his drink, he offered her one, urging her to drink it, saying that if she placed the drink in the same position he had while drinking, it would be a sign that she was meant to be “his woman”.
“And it happened!” she declared. “There he was on one knee.
Meyiwa the asked her, “Would you marry me?”
She responded with a question: “Dude, where’s the ring?”
His response?
“I said this the first time we met, that somehow I feel whole when I’m with you”.
“He knew how messed up I was”
Anele interjected, to quote a few lyrics from a song by Alicia Keys featuring SA’s DJ Black Coffee and Common. The last line states: “Who wants to love somebody like me? If you want to love somebody I like me, it means that you must be messed up too”.
“Yes!” Khumalo responded.
‘’He knew how messed up I was, and I knew how messed he was but for some reason it did not matter. I even said in one of my interviews hat for the first time in my life, I feel like a person needs no qualifications to be loved, you just love that person because you know they’re going to mess up, you know they’re going to hurt you, you know that they are going to do things that will hurt you ‘beyond’, but somehow you can’t help but love them”.
Anele then probed: “So, you said that your relationship with Senzo was a waste of your time. Is that the hurt speaking?"
“Yes,” she responded.
Asked if she was ever tempted to screengrab her text conversations with Senzo after his death, to “show people the love that you guys had”.
Khumalo says she did not have that urge.
“I’ve always been at peace where Senzo is concerned. How he felt about me - you cant take that away from me. That’s the beauty of it. You can scream, you can accuse, you can call me names, but one thing that you can never take away from me is that fact that that man loved me - even in his grave.”
• Come back tomorrow for PART TWO
IOL