Rachel Kolisi and Siya Kolisi. Picture: siyakolisi/Instagram
by Kevin Govender
From the Bee Gees How Deep Is Your Love to Neil Diamond’s Love on the Rocks; from Rod Stewart’s Have I Told You Lately That I Love You to Mariah Carey’s Without You- music has defined love. And Hans Christian Andersen was on track when he proclaimed, “Where words fail, music speaks”.
So maybe rock star, Freddie Mercury’s hits , I want to Break Free and Another One Bites The Dust, are symbolic of the dissolving of Siya and Rachel Kolisi’s marriage.
Pardon my banter but I just thought we needed a seasoning of persiflage as our nation mulls over the unexpected split of a Xhosa boy and a Grahamstown white girl.
Siya Kolisi is a Natal Shark, though not of the Great “White” variety. Whilst he is aggressive on the field, watchful of any skirting on the flanks , he must have “smelt the blood in the water” some time ago.
“Eight is Enough”! Once a famous American sitcom TV series, but Siya's had his fill and the tide has now run out. However, analysts speculate that Siya is swimming in money, with the millionaire rugby star owning a car collection worth millions.
He has a R20m mansion in the Eastern Cape, has his own underwear brand and has a vested interest in various businesses besides the Siya Kolisi Foundation. His net worth is put at $10m. So there’s a lot of money floating around.
They say that happy marriages are made in heaven but so too are thunder and lightning.
Just ask Matthew and Sonja Booth, Trevor Noah and Minky Kelly and Jonathan Butler and Bianca van Niekerk and Mmusi and Natalie Miamane.
Just when we thought that two of SA’s long term inter-racial marriages were heading for half a century, both were batted out! Connie and Herman Mashaba called it a day after 34 years and Judy Sexwale survived 31 years with Tokyo.
But it’s not about black and white! It’s just inexplicable human behaviour. Yeats said it long ago - things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Over time, the inexplicable alchemy of attraction turns bad and sours the matrimonial drink.
As people compete for their time and they become public property, celebrity marriages often hang on life support until they flat-line. The playgrounds of the decadent, power-elite, is a world outsiders never see. Their indiscretions are legion and form the very top of an iceberg, crystallised from a thousand scandals.
There is an element of ambiguity in their private life whose surface is without a ripple but whose clouded depths, bears the living tendrils of the past and that no person is without a past and no past without a secret.
This ethnic exogamy is drawing clucked tongues and salivating conjecture from a society that saw them as role models in a diverse SA.
Whilst their 2016 much publicised wine estate wedding under giant oak trees is but a memory , maybe the couple should try and “Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Ole Oak Tree”, just like the 1973 hit by Tony Orlando and Dawn.
* Kevin Govender, Umhlatuzana.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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