Breaking The Silence

Andile Gaelesiwe says she’ll continue to take a stand against the abuse of women as she can’t sit back and “wait for the worst”

- Mpho Tshikhudo

SHE sashays into the lobby of a trendy hotel in Melrose Arch, Joburg, dressed in thigh-high boots and fashionable mirror sunglasses, singing along to the music blaring over the speakers.

“I still sing,” Andile Gaelesiwe declares when she joins us. The 44-year-old shot to fame as a kwaito singer but is best known as the presenter of SABC1’s hit TV show Khumbul’ekhaya.

Yet it’s not her singing or her award winning show that’s making her the talk of the town these days. Andile’s role as an anti-abuse activist made newspaper headlines when she recently supported songbird Busisiwe “Cici” Thwala.

The 30-year-old singer sustained broken pelvic bones after her lover, kwaito hotshot Arthur Mafokate, allegedly dragged her down the road with his car.

Cici also claimed she was left unable to have children after she and her former record label boss allegedly had an altercation about his phone in an earlier incident. She’ll face off against her former flame in court again on 20 September.

Arthur, who laid a counter charge of malicious damage to property against Cici, is facing an assault charge but he may also be charged with reckless and negligent driving after Cici’s lawyers asked the court to consider it.

The case has drawn a lot of media attention but Andile is one of only a few celebs who has been outspoken about it all.

“If your woman gets too much for you to handle don’t try to break her physically, emotionally or otherwise. Just walk away. Ain’t nobody got time for abusers, famous or not,” she captioned an Instagram snap of Cici on crutches in a hospital gown.

Andile is a survivor of abuse herself – she was raped by her biological father at 11 and then again by another man before she turned 20 (Rape has no place here, 28 February 2013).