Karin Kortjé’s road to healing
More than a decade after her boyfriend murdered a guesthouse owner, Idols’ Karin tells of her road to healing and forgiveness
SHE was the apple picker from Grabouw whose golden voice had even the toughest Idols judges singing her praises.
It was the ultimate ragsto-riches tale: when Karin Kortjé won M-Net’s singing competition in 2005 it seemed as if the 26-year-old mom had managed to sing her way out of poverty.
But only eight months later South Africa’s newest singing sensation vanished from the music scene as quickly as she’d appeared. This was after a horrific murder committed at a Cape guesthouse where Karin had been staying.
The owner of the establishment, Renate Kellerman (39), was found dead and the songbird’s boyfriend, Cheslyn Williams, was arrested and later found guilty of the crime.
Yes, she made bad choices, the now 38-year-old mom of four says, more than a decade later. “My taste in men was my undoing.”
She still sings and is working on an album of songs she wrote – her first album since the one she made soon after winning Idols. But she acknowledges the murder dealt her once-promising career a heavy blow.
Her name is still often left out of advertising material in which other former Idols winners are mentioned – and it hurts, she says.
In the years after the murder she fell into a deep depression. “I had sleepless nights. My life was in ruins. My children’s lives and my marriage suffered as a result.”
Karin married in 2009 and hoped to put her past behind her, but the relationship went sour and she and her husband went their separate ways. He’s the father of her three youngest kids, who are eight,
seven and three. (In terms of the law, her ex and their kids may not be named to protect the children in a divorce matter.)
One thing she’s grateful for is that Renate’s husband, Wynand, and their two children have forgiven her.
“Five years after the murder I found Wynand’s number and called him. I thought he’d put the phone down in my ear, but he didn’t,” she recalls. “They forgave me and that’s when my healing process started.
“They told me how they buy a cake every year on Renate’s birthday and talk about her. She was a dear person.”
Wynand confirms that he and his children, Michaela (18) and Armand (15), have forgiven Karin. “She came to my house in Kempton Park [ Johannesburg]. I appreciate the fact that she came to face my kids.”
He says he and his children are doing well. “We harbour no resentment towards Karin and we wish her all the best.”
KARIN was only five years old when she became a solo singer in church. She grew up in the Western Cape as one of seven children of Niklaas, a Telkom worker, and Margaret, a domestic helper. Her dad died when Karin was 13 and her mom when she was in matric.
At weekends Karin performed with a local band, the Elginairs, and she put food on the table by picking apples during harvest time.
After winning Idols she asked her boyfriend at the time, Stanley Witbooi, to move to Johannesburg with her and their son, Cameron (then 3).
“But he didn’t want to leave Grabouw,” Karin says. “I had to choose between my career and Stanley.”
A few months after moving to Johannesburg she received a letter from an old friend, Cheslyn Williams, whom she hadn’t seen in years. He included his phone number.
“The next morning I dialled the number and got through to the Drakenstein prison in Paarl. Cheslyn was in jail for burglary.”
The fact that he was behind bars didn’t bother her though. “Prison authorities said if I agreed to do a motivational talk there, I could see Cheslyn. After my speech they left us alone in a room to talk,” she says.
He was released a week later and their romance blossomed.
But just a few weeks after that her life would change forever. While she was in Cape Town for work, she stayed for three days in Le Petit Chateau guesthouse in Durbanville where Cheslyn came to visit her.
She had to go out to work one evening and when she came back, he was gone. That’s when Karin and her manager found Renate’s half-naked body in one of the rooms.
Cheslyn was soon arrested and eventually found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life behind bars and died in prison in 2015.
“Before he died he tried to contact me but I wouldn’t answer his calls,” Karin says. She believes he wanted to make peace with her.
Their relationship was toxic, she says. “I was being abused but I wanted to help him. I thought I could change him.”
He once put a knife to her throat and he’d also threatened to kill her little boy.
Thinking back to their short relationship she’s still angry with herself sometimes, she says. “I don’t know what I was thinking. And then it ended in tragedy. Someone had to pay with their life for me to see the truth of it.”
Another tragedy in her life was Stanley’s death in 2010. “He’d been looking after a shack for someone in Grabouw. He was drinking and there was a candle. He burnt to death,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks. “He was a good person.”
Karin was already married at the time. “I thought my husband was the love of my life,” she says. “I loved him completely and put everything into that marriage. But it didn’t work.”
She announced last year they were splitting but the divorce hasn’t been finalised. Karin says she’s now living for her children and her career.
There’s someone special in her life but they’re taking it slowly. Then she adds, “He opens the door for me and buys me chocolate. I’m not used to a man treating me like that. But I like it.”
Through everything she kept working on her singing career. Her musical production This Is My Life was nominated for an award at the KKNK arts festival in 2012 and two years later Karin was the opening act for Canadian singer Tamia’s South African tour. This year she started her own singing competition, Overberg’s Got Talent, to discover young talent in that Western Cape region. The winner, Marcellino Swartz, is joining Karin on stage later this month in GrandWest’s Grand Arena in Cape Town for the production Night with the Stars.
She still watches Idols on TV. “I’m hoping to be at one of this season’s live broadcasts in Johannesburg, even if I have to buy my own plane ticket. I just want to be in the audience again.”
Yes, she’s made mistakes, she adds. “But going forward I’m going to try to do the right thing. It’s not how many times you fall that matters, but how many times you get up.”
‘I was being abused but I wanted to help him and thought I could change him’