Fikile Mthwalo has opened up about where life has taken her, including, or perhaps because of, the drawbacks she has experienced in life, including the failure of her marriage to actor Atandwa Kani.
This was all in the introductory video of her new YouTube channel, This is 2020-FIKS, which went live yesterday.
Mthwalo married Kani, the son of legendary actor Dr John Kani, in 2015. Together they lived in New York.
Atandwa Kani, also an actor, famously starred as the younger T’Chaka, his father playing the role of the older T’Chaka in Black Panther.
The failed marriage to the ‘Prince of theatre’
Of her marriage to Kani, Mthwalo had this to say.
“Yes, my marriage ended. Everybody knows. And I’ll talk about it. I will,” says Mthwalo in the video.
“But you know how they say only the two people know what really happened in a relationship. Sometimes, even in that marriage, the people don’t know,” quips Mthwalo.
“Why did I move back to Johannesburg after ten years in New York?” asks Mthwalo.
“Well, I failed. I failed at pretty much everything I had set out to do. I got my degree, though. I got my degree…. But as soon as I graduated, I couldn’t work … I didn’t have papers to work in the United States. So, that was almost an immediate fail.”
The animated Mthwalo dives deeper into the details of her personal failures.
“And yes, a couple of years later, my marriage crashed and burned…. That was tough,” says Mthwalo.
“I started a business during the pandemic, and that came to a screeching halt as well.”
“I think any of those three things are enough to make a person question ‘what the hell am I doing on this planet?’” says Mthwalo.
Yet another setback introduced itself to Mthwalo’s already shaky life.
“Oh, and by the way, I also filed for bankruptcy. So, my life was a sh**show.”
“… But I always had this escape hatch at the back of my mind… like, even though acting is kicking you in the butt, a man will come and save you. You’re pretty, like, that’s just how I thought things would work out. Someone would come and save me…. And provide for me while I figure my life out. And I dated a lot of successful men.”
Realising nobody was coming to save her
“And not to mention, I thought I had dated (married) my own prince charming. I got the status, I got to be somebody, and to feel safe. But by the end of that marriage, I felt like a nobody… and I felt the most unsafe I have ever felt in my entire life,” continues Mthwalo.
“I felt like an abject failure.”
“Oh, and my agent dropped me,” the actress adds.
“What was wrong with me. I felt fundamentally broken. I felt useless… and I feel like that’s why I waited in New York for so long. I was (a) waiting for a man to save me, and (b) I was waiting to get lucky, or both. Now I know that luck is created from the inside out. It has nothing to do with what happens on the outside, and everything to do with your mind,” says Mthwalo.
The actress closes the video on a hopeful note, having learnt the tools to pick herself back up and move her life in the direction of her purpose and calling.
“Even though things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to, they forced me into the woman I am today. I love the woman I am today,” concludes Mthwalo.
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