HEARTBREAK: Loss of both parents deprives Inathi Rhayi of her great source of strength…

By Siyabonga Kamnqa

SHE might be wearing a sexy smile, but behind that smile, award-winning TV actress Inathi Rhayi has been privately nursing a lingering heartache.

The multi-talented actress opened up to Weekly SA Mirror about the pain of losing both her parents in the space of eight months this year, with the first blow  having hit her in January this year when her mother, Nowanathi Peredayisi, passed away.

The Cape Town-based actress said it was a devastating moment for her as she was close to her mother. But, as if to add salt to injury, death struck again in her family last month when her father, Mongezi Peredayisi, succumbed to a short illness.

Said Rhayi, fighting back tears: “It’s been the toughest year of my life. My mom had a severe stroke attack in 2020, and, since then, she’s been in and out of hospital. She couldn’t speak or walk until her right leg was amputated due to the pains she had.

“Just when I was coming to terms with my mom’s passing and not even having fully recovered from the loss, then my father got sick. He was diagnosed with TB and also departed last month.  So, within an eight months’ period, I lost both my parents. It is really tough but I have to soldier on.

“My father’s passing came as a shock and really knocked me and my siblings so badly, especially because I was very close to both my parents. I spent most of my childhood with both of them. I could speak about anything with both of them and they were like my friends.

“I miss them every day, and get so emotional when I think about how supportive they were to all seven of us as their children. I still cry when I think about them,” said the Interrogation Room, Isikizi and Tango actress. 

Rhayi said she was grateful for the support she got from her musician husband Zandisile Rhayi.

 “I have been to hell and back. But he has been my rock throughout all these trying times. In times like these, it is always great to know you have someone that you can count on for support,” said Rhayi.

HHP’S MOM TO RECEIVE LIFETIME AWARD ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Talented: Buang Moloto Foundation seeks to honour selfless community builders

By Victor Mecoamere

Theriso Tsambo, the mother of the late  rapper Jabulani “Hip Hop Pantsula” Tsambo, will be given a lifetime achievement award during the inaugural Buang Moloto Choral Music Festival in Rustenburg, North West on October 28.

Arguably, this is a long overdue honour for Theriso Tsambo, who is a choral music composer, conductor, adjudicator and a language lecturer at North West University at Mmabatho in Mahikeng, North West. While she is well known in choral music circles and academia across South Africa and Southern Africa, Theriso – who bore the phenomenal “HHP” in Mafikeng on 14 September 1980 – is known for being a publicity shy individual, hence she was overshadowed by her charismatic son, who passed away on 24 October 2018.

Some of her most popular compositions are Ma-Afrika molato ke‘ng (Setswana for what has gone wrong, fellow Africans?), which decries women and children’s abuse; Halala Bahumagadi (in praise of the brave women who gallantly participated in the famous Anti-Dompas laws march at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on 9 Aug 1956); and Thapelo ya HIV-Aids (a prayer for solace and respite from the rampant HIV-Aids pandemic).

Tsambo, whose compositions were featured in the Sowetan and Aggrey Klaaste Nation  Building Festival in Johannesburg in the early 2000s, announced herself to the South African choral music scene when she topped in the Northwest Choral Music Composers’ Competition with Ma-Afrika molato ke‘ng in 1997. Coincidentally, Ma-Afrika molato ke‘ng was prescribed for competing high school choirs in the early 2000s, and she was also honoured by the Northwest Schools Music Association and the South African Schools Music Organisation.

Engineer and philanthropist Buang Moloto, who recently founded the Buang Moloto Foundation – under whose auspices the inaugural music festival is being held – said told Weekly SA Mirror in a telephonic chat this week that “For us, honouring Mme MaTsambo is really an overdue gesture of a most heartfelt sense of appreciation, because she is such a humble person, who is reserved, and one who would rather let her artistic talents speak volumes. This is our way of saying to our local top achievers in youth and community development, ‘we want you to do your best for the communities, especially the youth, elderly, destitute and vulnerable women and children, and we will recognise and acknowledge you’.”

The choirs that will participate in the inaugural Buang Moloto Choral Music Festival at the Rustenburg Civic Centre in Rustenburg, North West on 28 October 2023, are Mompati Chorus, Moretele Chorus, Platinum Voices, Rustenburg Retired TEACHERS Choir, Tshwane South College Choir, Tswelopele Chorus, URC  Lesetlheng, Mabopane URCSA Choir, African Sweet Melodies, Dolce Melodies Choral Choir, Harmonious Chorus, Impala AET Choir, Johannesburg Correctional Services Choir, Khuma Choral, Letlhabile Choral and Mmino Lorato Choral Sounds.