Saved & clean
A sister’s love could break Lucas’s hold on his snivelling sidekick Stokkies.
Vernon “Stokkies” Jacobs (Wayne van Rooyen) has an angel on one shoulder named Tsatsi (Joyce Skefu) and a devil on the other named Lucas (Sello Maake Ka Ncube). Easily swayed, he’s been weaving from one lie to the next between them ever since he got out of jail in August and landed his job at Safe ’n Clean. But when the lift at NFH breaks down on Friday 11 December, Stokkies is stuck in limbo with the one person who could help him step out of this ongoing battle and become his own man: his sister Yolandi (Lerey Lalita).
TSATSI vs LUCAS
Yolandi’s forgiveness and reconciliation could change Stokkies’ life “in a huge way,” according to Wayne. “I don’t think that Stokkies needs to be bad. He gets caught up in doing things that he’s not supposed to do, especially with Lucas, who’s like a father figure to Stokkies because he feels like his family has disowned him. He knows that the stuff he’s doing isn’t right but the money is enticing. So even though he’s drawn to Maletsatsi and the fact that here’s a good person wanting to do good by him and giving him the opportunity, there’s Lucas on the other side. It’s an addiction of sorts. Every time Lucas calls, Stokkies is like, ‘Okay, I’ll avoid the call today, I’ll avoid it tomorrow’, but then the following day he’ll pick it up and be like, ‘Hi Sir, what do you need me to do?’ It’s toxic and that’s part of his problem. Stokkies needs to step into his own and do right by himself. He’s trying that now but he’s easily influenced.”
SISTER SAVIOUR
Yolandi represents the promise of a real family’s embrace and support that Lucas can’t match. “When she came to visit in prison (in October 2014, when she was actually trying to help Lerumo and Anzani – played by Tshepo Mosese and Fulu Mugovhani), it was a huge thing. He saw hope within that. He misses his family and his sister. There’s a lot of guilt within him but also a lot of like, ‘I wish that we could get over everything and start afresh’. But obviously that’s going to take some big steps on his part and I think hers as well.”
CAN SHE FORGIVE?
But Yolandi isn’t at a place of forgiveness at all. She told Anzani on Wednesday 18 November that she could never forgive Stokkies and wanted nothing to do with him. “He got involved with the wrong crowd and he was dealing drugs to try make a quick buck. He drank a lot, experimented a lot and his family suffered a lot because of that phase. He spent a couple of years in jail because of his past and the stuff he got involved in. And there’s a major thing that also happened between Yolandi and Stokkies that we’ll hear about very soon,” hints Wayne. In fact, it’s one of the things that will come out while the siblings are forced together in that confined space on Friday 11 December. “It’s quite a revealing moment and Anzani’s taken aback because she didn’t see that coming,” reveals Wayne. “But if you’re honest with someone, it can either make or break a relationship and I think this is one of those moments where you can either build on it or let everything just wither away.”
MAKE OR BREAK
At first it looks like it’s a break moment because Yolandi can’t wait to get away from Stokkies on Monday 14 December. On Tuesday 15 December, Stokkies tells Tsatsi to give it up because he’s never getting him family back. But Anzani has seen something in Yolandi that Stokkies hasn’t dared to believe and from Wednesday 16 December, we’ll see things begin to change for the Jacobs siblings.