KFC couple gears up for 'perfect' wedding

14 November 2019 - 10:01
By Yoliswa Sobuwa
Hector Mkansi and his  wife Nonhlanhla Soldaat. / Thulani Mbele
Hector Mkansi and his wife Nonhlanhla Soldaat. / Thulani Mbele

Nonhlanhla Soldaat has long dreamt of a fairytale wedding, and now her dreams are about to come true.

She has received support from big corporate brands after a video of her husband, Hector Mkansi, 37, proposing to her at a KFC outlet went viral. The couple's video made global headlines.

Mzansi's most-loved couple have been together for eight years. Soldaat said she met Mkansi when she was 18 and he was 27. At the time, her mother was against their relationship after she learnt that Mkansi was a pastor at a Zion Christian Church.

"My mother said Zion men were players and he would impregnate and leave me. It was worse when I visited him.

"We went to his home in Limpopo and I was warmly welcomed by his family. When I came back home my mother said I should go back to where I was from. I was emotional when I called him and he spoke to my mother and promised to pay lobolo."

Soldaat said it had not always been easy for them and at times Mkansi could not even afford to give her R20 for transport to return home after a visit or even buy her roll-on.

"But he was different from other men and introduced me as his wife even before he paid lobola. Our love was not based on material things."

Mkansi, the more talkative of the two, said he had known from the day he met Soldaat that she was "the one".

"I met her at a funeral and I asked a relative to call her for me. However, when she was in front of me I was a bit shaking and I ended up sending her for a plate of food and a juice. When she came back with the food I told her there was something missing from her plate, which was her number," he said.

"I only managed to complete the lobola last year and we got married in December. It was not a big wedding and it was far from what we wanted and I vowed to make her feel special every year, which is what I did on Friday," Mkansi said.

"I asked one of the employees at KFC to help me propose again. It was such a mission and she complained, thinking that I was interested in one of the ladies.

"She got her food and the ring was wrapped in a paper in her boxmaster. She threw the paper away and I asked her to check what was inside,"

The couple is now looking forward to their dream wedding. "We have not come up with a date but I can't wait to come down from a helicopter holding my wife in her champagne dress. Everything that is happening is what we had been praying for."