The other woman
MaNzuza’s 30th anniversary is off to a shaky start when her ex-fiancé returns to KwaMashu with his new wife MaDlamini.
The Mdletshes’ marriage has suffered some serious blows over the past year – from abandonment to secret daughters and inconvenient lovers, but they’ve weathered it all and Pastor Mdletshe’s (Glen Gabela) excitement over planning their upcoming 30th anniversary party has been very sweet. But Uzalo viewers thought a collective “uh-oh” when “old family friend” Advocate Bheki Zulu (Luthuli Dlamini) returned on Tuesday 10 October. And MaNzuza (Leleti Khumalo) is in for an even bigger shock on Wednesday 11 October when she comes face to face with his travel buddy: his wife MaDlamini (Zinzi Zungu).
THE PROBLEM PAST
MaNzuza and Advocate Zulu – a childhood friend of hers and Pastor Mdletshe’s – fell deeply in love in January this year after Pastor Mdletshe had abandoned her in KwaMashu for over a year. But on Monday 27 February, the very day that Advocate Zulu proposed to MaNzuza, Pastor Mdletshe returned, leading to a great amount of bitterness and indecision until MaNzuza chose to
stick with her marriage in March. And when she regretted that choice in July, Advocate Zulu dropped the bomb on her, revealing that he’d gotten married in the meantime. He described his wife as “a good woman, decent and smart” with a great sense of humour. Now when posh lawyer MaDlamini meets MaNzuza, it seems that she’s either the actress to end actresses, or her husband has been engaged in quite the cover up. MaDlamini is open and friendly with MaNzuza and the more she gets to know the Mdletshes, the more she admires and likes them.
PERJURY!
“She thinks they’re amazing,” says Zinzi. “She is a newlywed in a sense, so she looks up to them as a couple who have been married and who have a family, who’ve created a home and a business in the church they’ve built together. She just thinks, ‘Oh wow, what an amazing couple’! It’s couple goals. She’s so confused about why he never mentioned the Mdletshes until they got to KwaMashu. In one of the scenes on Thursday 12 October, she even asks, ‘Why did you keep these people from us?’ And he says, ‘No, we were friends but I moved away. Life happens.’ He tries to sweep it under the carpet and tells her, ‘I only thought of them now because I was back. You know how friendships are. Out of sight, out of mind.’ Straight up lying,” says Zinzi.
DREADFUOL DINNERS
Poor MaDlamini is wandering about without a clue, which leads to a hugely enjoyable scene when she and her husband interrupt the Mdletshes’ anniversary dinner on Monday 16 October. “Playing a scene with so many emotions and layers happening at one table is a lot of fun. You have me completely oblivious and loving my husband and MaNzuza is jealous but she can’t show it and the pastor is trying to move on… and there is so much happening in that one scene,” exclaims Zinzi.
THE OTHER WOMAN
Now both of Advocate Zulu’s loves will find themselves in the awkward position of being “the other woman”. “You want to root for the person that you know and that you love and it’s going to be very difficult for them, because what MaNzuza is doing is wrong,” says Zinzi. “But in the way that it’s played out, it’s in the name of love and they have a relationship from way back. So I think that it will be interesting to see how people receive it because it could go either way. It could be sympathy for me, or it could be complete understanding for her and her longing to be in this relationship.” It sounds like Leleti and Zinzi had a wonderful time acting it out for us. “Sometimes you get so into character and even when we get off the set, sometimes we’ll even play around with each other like, ‘Oh no don’t touch my husband! Don’t do this, don’t do that,’” laughs Zinzi.