Friends To The End

Manaka Ranaka shares the heartache of losing best friend Iko Mash and opens up about living with the guilt of a car crash that killed a teen two years ago.

- Ruwaydah Harris

LIFE has been unkind to her in recent years. Two years ago a car crash that claimed the life of a teenager changed her life irrevocably . Actress Manaka Ranaka (38) was behind the wheel and has been riddled with guilt and remorse since.

She found solace in her best friend, celebrity make-up artist Iko Mash (42). But then she too suddenly passed away in July (Farewell, bright star, 3 August), leaving Manaka alone and mired in sad memories.

“I woke up this morning thinking of her and missing her terribly, only to find her tombstone is ready,” Manaka says.

The tombstone head was unveiled shortly after the funeral in July. Manaka was involved in its design, which includes Iko’s birth name, Billy Mathola Emmanuel Mashiloane, and her stage name, Iko Mash.

“She was a friend for life,” Manaka says of the woman she looked after until her death.

“There’s nothing special about me caring for my best friend on her deathbed. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it is not the last either,” she says in response to those who lauded her as a saint on social media for taking care of Iko when she was ill.

“If people think friendship is about the good times only, what kind of friends do they keep? It made me angry that people were mesmerised by the fact I cared for my sick friend. I didn’t know people were this mean that they would discard their friend in times of need.”

Manaka says Iko came to live in the house where she was renting a room in Leondale because Iko couldn’t afford the rent on her place in the north of Joburg anymore.

“It was a place I rented to study in because it gets noisy with all the children at home [her daughters, KG (16) and Naledi (8), and her sister Dineo’s kids, a 7-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl]. I converted the space into a man cave.