Money Almost Destroyed Me

Masego Kwenamore nearly lost everything because of her gambling addiction. Now she’s written a book to help others with the same problem.

- Gabisile Ngcobo

WHEN she was little, she’d daydream about living a life as glamorous as the ones led by the characters on the soapie The Bold and the Beautiful.

Her family was one of the first in the village of Mofufutso in North West province to own a TV and she’d spend hours in front of it, spellbound by the mansions and millionaires.

“I looked at these women and imagined myself as one of them,” she says.

But Masego Kwenamore’s taste for the finer things in life led her down a dark path she’s only recently managed to get away from. For 15 years she was in the grip of a gambling addiction that destroyed her marriage, saw her racking up more than R300 000 in debt and almost killed her.

“The money I loved so much almost destroyed me,” the 42-year-old mother of three says.

But she’s beat her demons, she says: The last time she was in a casino was in 2013.

“I was young and stupid,” she acknowledges. But she also understands she’s an addict, which is why she’s sharing her story in her self-published book Bend, Don’t Break. She wants people to know gambling addiction is an illness “like alcohol and drugs – and it’s nothing to be ashamed of ”.

Masego, a pastor’s wife, spent many years feeling ashamed of the lie she was living. “At church, I was this woman of God,” she says. “But when I was alone I’d look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Who are you deceiving? God won’t be mocked’.”