Abortion, miscarriage, confusing trips to traditional healers to try to prize her polygamous lover away from a younger woman, losing all her money... Then bouncing back with an acting job in the UK
For six years, Pamela Nomvete had local TV audiences eating from the palm of her hand — and was the envy of her peers — but she hated every minute of it, according to her new memoir.
In Dancing to the Beat of the Drum: In Search of My Spiritual Home, Nomvete sheds light on the tumult in her life, which is all the more surreal considering how glamourous her life seemed at the peak of her time as Ntsiki Lukhele on SABC 1’s soapie, Generations.
While the book is not available in South Africa yet, it has been released in the UK (where she resides), and is available electronically on Amazon for around R84.
This is her way of finally telling her story of what brought on her demise (who would have thought she ended up selling old clothes on the streets of Johannesburg?).
For six years, Nomvete helped draw millions of viewers — helping it become the country’s top soapie — but “every second I walked into the SABC meant a minute off of my oxygen tank”.
Besides her crossing paths with the show's producers and cast members due to the working conditions (without naming names, she talks about peers that had turned their dressing rooms into homes, some who were too broke to even afford to extend their houses, and even ones with alcohol addiction), she also lets the reader in on her dramas at home.
It’s a no-holds-barred account of her fall from grace, a revisit of her abortion, which was followed by a miscarriage a decade later, the confusing trips to traditional healers to try and prize her polygamous lover (who she blindly married despite the red warning lights, and later divorced) from the hands of another, much younger woman, a brief romance with former co-star Sello Maake Ka Ncube and losing her father to cancer — not to mention her going flat broke.
She writes at some point: “That particular morning, my landlady paid me a visit. Her message was short and sweet. If I did not come up with the rent in two weeks, she was going to have me thrown out.
“After that visit, I stupidly looked at the fridge, the only piece of furniture in the living-dining area, and then I went to the bedroom to check out the double bed... when I realised that, even if I sold these items, I would not be able to fulfil my obligation to pay the rent.”
She said at some stage she discovered that she had “a gift for prophesying”, and it is then that one day she got the urge to go to the SABC and pray in its corridors and “spread the blood of Christ along its contaminated walls”.
She wanted to ask God to purify the entire building and the corporations’ employees.
She continues: “... I quietly walked along those corridors and prayed. It never occurred to me when performing this seemingly insane ritual that perhaps what I should be doing was asking to see some of the casting departments and see if there was any work available for one of the so-called “top actresses in the country”.
- Nomvete plays Mandy Kamara on the popular British soapie Coronation Street.
This article was first printed in The Times on 15 January 2013
Ex-Generations star reveals messy personal life
Abortion, miscarriage, confusing trips to traditional healers to try to prize her polygamous lover away from a younger woman, losing all her money... Then bouncing back with an acting job in the UK
For six years, Pamela Nomvete had local TV audiences eating from the palm of her hand — and was the envy of her peers — but she hated every minute of it, according to her new memoir.
In Dancing to the Beat of the Drum: In Search of My Spiritual Home, Nomvete sheds light on the tumult in her life, which is all the more surreal considering how glamourous her life seemed at the peak of her time as Ntsiki Lukhele on SABC 1’s soapie, Generations.
While the book is not available in South Africa yet, it has been released in the UK (where she resides), and is available electronically on Amazon for around R84.
This is her way of finally telling her story of what brought on her demise (who would have thought she ended up selling old clothes on the streets of Johannesburg?).
For six years, Nomvete helped draw millions of viewers — helping it become the country’s top soapie — but “every second I walked into the SABC meant a minute off of my oxygen tank”.
Besides her crossing paths with the show's producers and cast members due to the working conditions (without naming names, she talks about peers that had turned their dressing rooms into homes, some who were too broke to even afford to extend their houses, and even ones with alcohol addiction), she also lets the reader in on her dramas at home.
It’s a no-holds-barred account of her fall from grace, a revisit of her abortion, which was followed by a miscarriage a decade later, the confusing trips to traditional healers to try and prize her polygamous lover (who she blindly married despite the red warning lights, and later divorced) from the hands of another, much younger woman, a brief romance with former co-star Sello Maake Ka Ncube and losing her father to cancer — not to mention her going flat broke.
She writes at some point: “That particular morning, my landlady paid me a visit. Her message was short and sweet. If I did not come up with the rent in two weeks, she was going to have me thrown out.
“After that visit, I stupidly looked at the fridge, the only piece of furniture in the living-dining area, and then I went to the bedroom to check out the double bed... when I realised that, even if I sold these items, I would not be able to fulfil my obligation to pay the rent.”
She said at some stage she discovered that she had “a gift for prophesying”, and it is then that one day she got the urge to go to the SABC and pray in its corridors and “spread the blood of Christ along its contaminated walls”.
She wanted to ask God to purify the entire building and the corporations’ employees.
She continues: “... I quietly walked along those corridors and prayed. It never occurred to me when performing this seemingly insane ritual that perhaps what I should be doing was asking to see some of the casting departments and see if there was any work available for one of the so-called “top actresses in the country”.
This article was first printed in The Times on 15 January 2013
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