I'm A Celebrity star Oti Mabuse suffered family heartache along with her sister Motsi.
The former Strictly Come Dancing professional was left devastated at the death of her half-brother Neo as he died by suicide aged just 18 while they were growing up in the South African township of Mabopane, near the capital Pretoria. His death not only left the family distraught, but meant they were shunned by superstitious locals who thought it would bring bad luck to anyone associating with the family.
Speaking about the tragedy previously, Oti's Strictly Come Dancing judge sister Motsi said: “He killed himself with a poison. And because the people of Africa are very religious and superstitious, something bad arose in our neighbourhood. With the suicide of Neo, our family was seen as one where there was a negative energy.
“Because of this rumour, no one came to us any more, because it was feared that the bad energy applied to the visitor.” Motsi is still at a loss to explain what drove Neo to poison himself, but she cites the fact that he still remembered when the family lived in poorer circumstances and found it very difficult to adjust when they went up in the world.
Born when their mum Dudu was still a teenager, he had a different father to Oti, Motsi and middle sister Phemelo. The young mum and baby lived with her mother and clergyman father in Kraalhoek, in South Africa’s North West province, until she met young lawyer Peter Mabuse and then became pregnant with Motsi.
With her father’s encouragement they married, but in the early days were so poor they had to live with an aunt in Mmabatho, a two-hour drive away. A year later in 1982, when Phemelo was born, the family moved 150 miles away to the township of Mabopane where they lived in relative comfort. Peter’s legal career went from strength to strength and today he is a High Court judge in Pretoria.
“Neo had witnessed the rise of my parents,” explained Motsi, 43, in her book Chili in the Blood: My Dance Through Life. “He still remembered the cramped life, which for us younger siblings was more of a narrative than a truly experienced reality.” Their mother also had a good job as a nursery school teacher, so the family could afford a house with “several rooms and a garden”.
But they were still a black family in apartheid South Africa, and when Oti was born in 1990 it would be another four years before Nelson Mandela became the country’s first black leader and the savagely racist system was finally dismantled. Motsi remembers all the sisters having to take a local community minibus to their convent school because they were not allowed on whites-only public transport.
She also remembers township riots and, while her parents were not involved in politics, she recalls hiding in her room when police came to ask questions. “We always knew when riots had broken out because we weren’t allowed to leave the house, even to go to school,” she wrote in her book.
Then the next day, when I was back on the school bus, I could see it was still burning everywhere and cars had been knocked over.” When police came to the house and asked her father questions “we children had to disappear into our rooms so we didn’t get anything from the conversations”.
The family believe that for Neo this was all too much. “I think all the changes had overwhelmed him a little bit, everything had seemed difficult to him,” said Motsi. “He had gone to a private school, but he had surrounded himself with people you might call ‘false friends.’ It was a tough time for all of us, but especially for my mum.’” Motsi says his suicide came shortly after Mandela’s release from prison in 1990, which marked the beginning of the end for apartheid.
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