Much more than SPIT N POLISH
MURPHY’S law is in full motion as we make our way to meet the suave Melusi Yeni. I’m running 30 minutes late, my phone’s battery is dead...
We arrive out of breath at the restaurant in Cresta, Jozi, and he’s not in the least fazed. He greets us warmly with a hug and ... mmmm ... smells as fresh as a daisy!
He’s already ordered a pizza for us and offers us some. What a gent!
Looking ultra fresh in a cocktail shirt and faded jeans, the man many now know as Generations Phenyo Mazibuko, the charming lawyer from Durban who likes the finer things in life, looks more handsome in person. At 37, he looks 28. We jump straight in. I observe that his image could give some models a panic attack.
He says he decided to trim down after he watched himself on Shreds and Dreams.
“My tummy looked so big there I couldn’t wait for the series to end!”
And because he always gets metrosexual roles, the gut had to give way for a six pack.
“TV is a superficial thing,” he comments, as if to explain that it was a career motivated move.
“I’ve been waiting forever to play the rugged guy but every time my agent calls she tells me: Darling, they
‘ want you to wear a suit.’”
But his love for photography confirms his image consciousness, whatever that image might be.
“I’m in love with the camera. I take mine everywhere I go.
“My mind is full of imagery. I look at people and the first thing I wonder is what their stories are... and a picture speaks a thousand words.”
He says his love of photography started when he had to give childhood pics to an agent and, to his dismay, he didn’t have any.
“I live in a world of pictures so that was annoying and depressing.”
But he paints a pretty good word picture of little Melusi: My earliest
“life memory is of me at six and having to wake up early to go to school cos of my mom’s early
’ shifts. She’s a nurse.
“It always felt like I’d only slept a wink,” he recalls.
“But that’s nothing compared to the panic I felt in Grade 4 in a white school. The pressure of having to speak English... it was daunting!”
It was also as a little lad that he had his first taste of acting. In his first year at Roseland Primary he was chosen to be the narrator of the Christmas nativity play.
“You should’ve seen my pride as the audience almost went up in flames with excitement,” he says beaming like a little kid.
Perhaps that’s why, after obtaining a diploma in marketing, he started frequenting the Natal Playhouse.
It was there that an agent spotted him and invited him to Joburg – and the rest is history.
“When I’d just started stage acting, Mary Thwala was a great mentor. She’d whisper sweetly ‘ not like that you idiot’ and I’d get it.”
He keeps saying how happy he is, except about one thing: that Americans are always used to tell African stories.
“That irks me. People who don’t know would assume it’s because South Africans aren’t ready to portray such characters but it’s not true...”
But mostly he’s just happy to be doing what he loves.