TV Oti’s poison tragedy
port. She also remembers township riots and, while her parents were not involved in politics, she recalls hiding in her room when police came to ask questions.
“We always knew when riots had broken out because we weren’t allowed to leave the house, even to go to school,” she wrote in her book. “Then the next day, when I was back on the school bus, I could see it was still burning everywhere and cars had been knocked over.” When police came to the house and asked her father questions “we children had to disappear into our rooms so we didn’t get anything from the conversations”.
The family believe that for Neo this was all too much. “I think all the changes had overwhelmed him a little bit, everything had seemed difficult to him,” said Motsi.
“He had gone to a private school, but he had surrounded himself with people you might call ‘false friends.’ It was a tough time for all of us, but especially for my mum.’”
Motsi says his suicide came shortly after Mandela’s release from prison in 1990, which marked the beginning of the end for apartheid.
Oti, whose full name is Otlile, was just a tot at the time and she became the apple of everyone’s eye, helping to heal the family’s grief.
From an early age all three girls showed a talent for dancing that they inherited from their mother, and it was clear from the start that Oti had the star presence that has made her a hit on Strictly and now on The Greatest Dancer. She has told how their mum converted an empty office into her own dance studio because there were no dance schools her girls could attend.
“We were the wow girls, the showgirls – all three,” said Motsi in her book.
“And the biggest diva of all of us, that was Otlile. The name means ‘She has arrived’, and so has she behaved since the day she was born. Of us three girls, she has the greatest confidence, the greatest self-awareness.”
Although she was set on a career as dancer, Oti – who can speak eight languages – trained as a civil engineer on leaving school just as a “back up” in case an injury wrecked her prospects.
Her sisters’ attainments are equally impressive – Motsi trained as a lawyer and Phemelo as a mechanical engineer.
“I was dancing when I was four and dancing has always been a part of my life,” said Oti.
“My mum was like, ‘School, school, school and after school you go and dance – no friends.
You go to the dance studio – who needs friends? Nobody needs friends’.”
In 2012, already a dance champion in South Africa,
Oti followed Motsi to Germany before coming to the UK to join Strictly three years later with her Romanian dancepartner husband Marius Lepure, 36.
She’s been in the show for four series, coming second in 2016 with Hollyoaks’ star Danny Mac and seventh last year with cricketer Graeme Swann.
Now fans are calling her the standout star of Simon Cowell’s new BBC show The Greatest Dancer, with enthusiastic tweets from viewers praising her judging skills and from fellow Strictly pros sending their congratulations.
And of course, plaudits from her family. For Oti that bond is important. She’s close to Phemelo’s children as well as her sisters and often posts adorable images of them together.
But it’s the words she posted online next to the picture at the top-left of this page, with her mum and siblings when she was a baby, that express it best. She said: “My family always got their hands on me, blessing and take care of each other!
“Through tough times, fun times and bad times, I know they’ve got my back... there’s no love like a mother and her children and between siblings.”