A-Listers
Soccer stars share what happens when booze takes over your life
Image: Veli Nhlapo
It’s the hottest club in the land: a Pimville rendezvous favoured by the glam set who drive flashy cars and splurge R14K apiece on bottles of French bubbly Ace of Spades.
However, on Wednesday afternoon it was footballers sharing their stories about the pitfalls of excessive drinking who took centre stage at the club touted as Soweto’s “millionaire’s playground”.
The event marked the launch of spirits company Diageo SA’s “Wrong Side of the Road” anti-drinking-and-driving campaign.
Arriving at the venue, the first person I meet is a familiar name — Sunday Times sports editor and commentator Bareng-Batho Kortjaas, better known as BBK.
Image: Thapelo Morebudi
Image: Thapelo Morebudi
A few minutes later BBK gets on stage as the day’s host, welcoming us and later hosting a panel discussion with soccer personalities including Desiree, Junior, Supersport United player Bradley Grobler, former striker Phumlani Mkhize and Mamelodi Sundowns legend Hlompho Kekana.
We learn about Desiree’s foundation, which aims to keep the youth off the streets in Hanover Park on the Cape Flats, while Hlompho, known as soccer’s “Mr Clean”, and Bradley talk about watching team mates fall off the rails.
But it is when Junior and later Phumlani tell of how excessive drinking saw them lose everything that you could hear a pin drop in the usually boisterous club.
Junior — who can lay claim to nine man-of-the-match awards — admits to a less-proud achievement: “I had about 15 accidents. All of them when I was drunk.”
Phumlani describes how he went from being one of the feted “Three Musketeers” (with Siyabonga Nomvethe and Sibusiso Zuma) to begging on the streets — a story that really hits the message home.
“I had everything but look at me today; I have nothing. Not even one car, not even a wife or a house to sleep in. Alcohol destroyed my life,” says the father of seven from Estcourt in KwaZulu-Natal.
Later, as we queued to fill our plates from a spread including grilled lamb chops, chakalaka, potato salad, dombolo and portions of pap, I couldn’t help but think that while it's pertinent for companies like Diageo to help change our attitudes about drinking and driving, perhaps the glorification of drinking culture is part of the problem…
Walking through the doors of the lavish space, which is bookended by vertical garden greenery with the distinctive “Konka” lettering, I spot our women’s national football team coach Desiree Ellis seated at one table and former footballer Junior Khanye, wearing a natty brown-and-gold patterned shirt with chinos, at another.
I head to one of the venue’s booths, which is usually where you’d find the club’s high rollers holding court at the weekend, as waiters offer tasty canapés including a spicy gazpacho, chicken kebabs with sweet chilli mayo dip and generously sized mushroom arancini balls.
In comes Mamello Makha, well known in sports circles as Bloemfontein Celtic’s super-fan. Mamello, pretty in pink, tells me she’s in the midst of expanding her beauty empire.
Her MM Exotic beauty salon chain is set to open its fifth parlour, this time in Sandton City, on March 1.
Image: Masi Losi
From Mzansi’s hottest party spot to a restaurant taking its name from the Latin word for gold.
Aurum, on the seventh floor of Africa’s tallest skyscraper, The Leonardo, in Sandton, was on Thursday night the setting for the reveal of what’s in store for Decorex Africa, one of the continent’s longest-running décor and design exhibition platforms.
I pass the bar where guests are being served gin cocktails and head to the pool deck where patrons can relax on loungers and daybeds.
As some 200 of the folk who decide what the interiors of our homes and offices should look like mingle on this warm summer evening, roaming waiters offer such delish morsels as sushi, tuna ceviche tacos and pulled pork in pita-bread pockets.
When Covid restrictions eased up, Decorex did manage to hold in-person events but there is no doubt the pandemic has forced event and exhibition companies to change the way they do things.
Image: Masi Losi
“We are no longer [simply] an exhibition company, we are a media company,” Carol Weaving, the MD of RX Africa, which annually produces more than 400 events including Decorex, announced to the crowd.
What does that mean? Physical exhibitions will take centre stage (Decorex is moving from Gallagher Estate to the Sandton Convention Centre for its next edition) with digital tools such as e-commerce and “media services” adding value.
I have to admit I recognised few faces in what is still a very lily-white industry. Someone I did recognise was Nandi Dlepu, who knows all about creating cool gatherings. Under the Mamakashaka umbrella, she has been the creative force behind The Wknd Social brunch parties and the ultra-hip Pantone Sundays colour-themed fashion parties.
Nandi tells me that the next instalment of her UMI Feel Good Series Music Festival — featuring live performance, music and DJs — is set to take place on the last Saturday this month.
Then it's meeting Samuel Alexander — who it turns out is related to legendary broadcaster Doreen Morris — an interior designer at Kim H Nieu, which is still going strong despite the death of its founder, Kim Hutton, nearly three years ago.
Samuel tells me the company was responsible for transforming Madiba’s former Houghton home into the boutique hotel, Sanctuary Mandela, which opened in September last year.
Next it's meeting young creative Keneilwe Mothoa, a standout in an exuberantly frilled black outfit, and catching up with interior design legend Stephen Falcke, who besides doing the original interiors for The Saxon Hotel and the Sandton Convention Centre is the decorator of choice for the super rich from the Motsepes to insurance billionaire Douw Steyn.
Stephen, who had a leg amputated a few years ago, tells me he hasn’t slowed down. He’s currently working on a whopping 30 projects.
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