OH NO SHE DIDN’T!
MaNgcobo calls out MaMlambo in church & Nkunzi gets a bullet!
If you’ve been watching church lady MaMlambo (Gugu Gumede) sneak around with her cheating gangster lover Nkunzi (Masoja Msiza) behind his wife – and her best friend – MaNgcobo’s (Dawn Thandeka King) back and you’re just waiting for the meltdown, your time has come. On Thursday 21 June, MaNgcobo is innocently looking for a funny videoclip on Nkunzi’s phone while he’s off getting a snack and she stumbles across a voicenote from “Sweetlips”. “She’s like ‘Oookaay, Sweetlips…’” reveals Dawn. “She plays the voicemail and she hears MaMlambo tell Nkunzi how he makes her feel!” The Kingdom Community church had better get ready for a brand-new fireand-brimstone preacher on Monday 25 June when MaNgcobo decides to drag them both from the pulpit.
PREACH & TEACH
MaNgcobo is wrecked by both her friend and her husband’s betrayal. But you wouldn’t know it to look at her when she arrives in church. “She looks absolutely stunning and I think she always prepares herself very well if she is going to confront a situation,” laughs Dawn. “MaMlambo is talking while seated in the church pews and then MaNgcobo gets up and she interrupts everything. I made a choice for her to start singing this song – as a jab to MaMlambo – as she walks up to the pulpit. The song says is that it’s a thorny and difficult road that we are travelling on… and those thorns are aimed at MaMlambo. Because before MaMlambo also got up in a similar way, singing a church song. I liked that bit, it’s really funny!” says Dawn gleefully. “People look up to MaMlambo. People think that she is on the moral high ground in her personal life. Because of the hurt that MaNgcobo feels, she wants to embarrass MaMlambo in a place where she knows that people with be disappointed in her.”
SINKING THE FRIEND-SHIP
MaNgcobo’s bravado hides the very real damage that MaMlambo has caused to her ability to ever enjoy the gift of friendship with other women again. “It gets one to evaluate friendships and how much you should tell friends. I think going forward what would happen with MaNgcobo is that she will just rely on her work and her kids, rather than trying to make another female friend. Or trying to make friends at all. Because she only had one friend and that one friend has let her down,” says Dawn.
BROKEN HEART
As for that husband, MaNgcobo might have an unwavering ride-or-die love with him, but his betrayal strikes at the heart of their marriage. “When one partner is betrayed in that kind of relationship, the betrayal is deep!” says Dawn. “She was tired of being a stay-at-home wife looking after the husband. She’s never been that type of person. She’s always wanted to handle business. Now I think that her thought process is, ‘Oh, so I was good as just a wife at home, not doing anything. And now that I’m powerful and I’m running my own establishment, you turn to someone who probably resembles me when I was still a stay-at-home type of person!’ Nkunzi lost the MaNgcobo that he knew, but he gained a stronger woman who compliments him as well. He should have looked at it like that.”
BULLET POINT
All of MaNgcobo’s fury vanishes in a second though, when she walks out of the house on Tuesday 26 June to find Nkunzi lying in the street, bleeding from a bullet wound. “She forgets about what has made them fight because she sees her man on the floor. All she thinks of is trying to get him help because, fundamentally, she loves this guy. As an actress, I gave myself flashbacks of the happy moments that MaNgcobo and Nkunzi have had. Her fear is that if he is dead, how is she going to live without him?” Vengeance might have to wait.