Life’s a handful even with four voluptuous wives
“ONE man, one wife,” the firebrand politician Julius Malema routinely cries at rallies to much applause from his red beret-wearing supporters as he rejects polygamous relationships.
But one Musa Mseleku, the star of Uthando Nesthembu, a new reality TV show on polygamy, is one man with deep pockets and four voluptuous wives… and 10 children.
The for mer SABC jour nalist-cum-businessman was a social media hit on Thursday night as Mzansi Magic aired the first in the series that follows the polygamous life of 42-year-old Mseleku and his four beautiful wives, MaCele, MaYeni, MaKhumalo and MaNgwabe.
He is a man with expensive taste, drives around in a Mercedes-Benz ML SUV. The family has a fleet of about 15 cars, with two cars each per wife, some of these Mercedes coupes or Isuzu double-cab bakkies for rural terrain.
The family has six well-furnished double-storey properties, one each for the wives, one for Mseleku and their family home where they grew up with his sister, Nompumelelo.
Mseleku said yesterday he had received more than 1 500 friend requests on social media on Thursday night, many lobbying to be his fifth wife. He laughed: “It is true, my Facebook is full of requests. Interestingly I thought women do not want polygamy, now others are asking to be five and six.”
Mseleku married his first wife Busisiwe Cele, 40, in 2002, before marrying Nokukhanya Yeni, 35, in 2007. The third and fourth wives, Thobile Khumalo and Mbali Ngwane – 28 and 34 respectively – married him in 2009.
Is he looking for wife number five? “My wives know that I will declare intention if there is an interest. It will never be by anyone’s request, it will be a choice between me and all my wives,” he said.
In memory of his late mother Florence, who died in 1999, many of his cars are private-plated with “Thanx Ma”. He had to quit his news reading job at UkhoziFM to nurse her.
“Throughout that period when my mother was sick I was not working, I had nothing financially, but I tried to please her and bought expensive furniture at home, which left me in financial ruin,” he said.
He was raised by his single mother and grandmother and never knew his father, who, he had been told, was dead.
In an emotional scene with two of his sons, Mseleku reveals how he would bathe and clean his mother in her death bed.
“She said to me ‘my boy, you are suffering because of me, but you will never again’,” he said.
Although the first episode portrayed only the good about the family, Mseleku said it was tough: “It is not as easy as people think, when there is tension there is tension, the difference is when there is an issue… we make sure that we resolve the issue by talking…” he said.