Real life
Actress, presenter and all-round fabulous person Gabisile Tshabalala on having a house full of children – including one born during lockdown.
She’s best known for her role as Pinkie in SABC2 show Hola Mpinji, but you will have seen her face pop up all over your screen, whether as a presenter, MC or brand ambassador.
But this has been the year of staying at home, and just as well, because Gabisile Tshabalala’s home life is at least as interesting as her career.
Gabi met her husband, Sacha Maswa Kongolo, at e.tv when she was working as an actress and he was their security provider. A friendship blossomed, but only after Gabisile’s divorce from her first husband did love bloom. Sacha now runs his own security company, offering guarding staff, camera installations and bodyguarding services, and Gabs helps him run it from their home in eastern Johannesburg. She’s also thinking outside the lockdown in creative ways as far as her media career is concerned.
“I started my own show, called Around Africa with Gabi, as a way of growing my brand outside South Africa and teaching South Africans about celebrities elsewhere in Africa,” she says. “Everyone knows all about US and European celebrities – and that has to change.”
Gabisile presents her show on Instagram Live under her own production company called Gabilu Productions.
She’s also producing a show on YouTube called Rylics – yes, it’s a hilarious show all about misheard song lyrics. “I’ve been inspired by my husband, who is an entrepreneur,” she says. “I’m at a stage where I want to create my own stuff.” Gabi and Sacha got married in a traditional ceremony in 2015, but in 2017 they flew to Sacha’s home country, the DRC, to hold a small ceremony there too. “I was pregnant with my first child, my daughter Sanchia, at the time. Her name is Spanish and it means ‘holy’.”
SO FAR, SO ORDINARY
But five years later, her brood has grown to five – yes, five – children. Gabi’s nuclear circle now consists of (don’t try this if you have a lisp): Samuel, 11, Samelia, who’s 9, 7-year-old Shadrack (nickname “Shadow”), Sanchia, 5, and Santi, a baby boy who is seven months old.
HOW?
Well, when Sacha and Gabi started dating, he told her he had one child. “I had always said I won’t date a man who has a child,” Gabi says. “But as I got a little older and wiser, and I fell more in love with Sacha, I had to revise my position. I thought, maybe one child is okay.”
When it came to full-disclosure time, it turned out one child was actually three – two boys and a girl, and the youngest was only one year old. These were Samuel, Samelia and Shadrack, and they were in their father’s care.
Gabi turned to her grandmother, who helped raise her, for advice. “I said, I’m only 24. It’s too much for me,” she recalls. “My granny said if I really loved him, I should take on his children and love them as my own.”
Since the children’s birth mother did not play a role in their lives, this was a possibility. Gabi remembered her own stepfather, who accepted her as his own. Gabi thought it over and decided. And just like that, she was the mother of four children.
“The first few years were not easy,” the undaunted actress admits. “I thought, ‘Let me just love them. If something were to happen to me, at least they’ve got siblings.’ “My mom was so worried about me with four children at 25. But I just lived with it!”
Chatting to Gabisile, you can see how she makes it work – she bristles with energy. But like the rest of us, she’s also had quite a year. Her beloved gran in Soshanguve contracted Covid and was hospitalised. Gabisile fell ill too but showed few symptoms beyond the infamous loss of taste. Her children, suddenly out of school, became used to sleeping later and not having to do the school rush – but missed their friends. There’s one more complication: Samelia is not developing normally verbally and probably requires special schooling. It’s been difficult, both to get a diagnosis and the required paperwork and permissions from her biological mother before she can be enrolled in a special-needs school. Before Covid interrupted her schooling, she was in a daycare centre.
Oh, and on top of all of that, Gabi was pregnant! Little Santi is her pandemic baby, and he was born at Edenvale Hospital in May, in the middle of the hard lockdown.
“I was treated well there at the hospital, and I can’t complain, but it was hard!” she recalls. “When I gave birth to my daughter, my husband was there. This time, he wasn’t allowed in. I was on my own!”
“I am a believer in Christ. I prayed!” Gabi says. “All I thought was, I want to go home as soon as possible. And I did. I gave birth at 9am, by 3pm we were out. Yes, it was weird, giving birth in a mask, but we were all fine, thank goodness.”
IS SANTI A HAPPY BABY?
“For the first two or three months, he cried a lot. Maybe it was a bit of colic? But now he’s just a mommy’s baby. It helps that he is my second child, and I am more comfortable with it.”
In fact, says Gabi, all her children get on well together. “We can’t separate them! When I was pregnant I went to visit my grandmother in Pretoria once or twice, taking Sanchia along. We’d stay for a day or two. Then all the children would complain, saying they longed to be together again!” Looking to the future, Gabi says she’s missing travel. She’s not desperate to be back on South African TV screens, especially as she is branching out internationally and in other media. “I’ve done enough in South Africa for now,” she admits. “I’m trying to venture outside.
I find that most South Africans don’t travel, and that’s what causes xenophobia. ”I want to do my bit to counteract that. My show is about learning about each other, about a fun way to show South Africans what is happening on the rest of the continent.”
As this tiny powerhouse is a success at whatever she turns her significant mind to, we are sure to see much more of Gabisile. ●