Ex-'Generations' star bares all

For six years, Pamela Nomvete had local TV audiences eating out of the palm of her hand - and was the envy of her peers - but she hated every minute of it, according to her new memoir.

In Dancing to the Beat of the Drum: In Search of My Spiritual Home, Nomvete sheds light on the tumult in her life, which is all the more surreal considering how glamorous her life seemed at the peak of her time as Ntsiki Lukhele on SABC1's soapie, Generations.

The hard copy version of the book is not available in South Africa yet, but it has been released in the UK, where Nomvete lives. In South Africa, the book is only available electronically on Amazon.com .

This is her way of finally telling her story of what brought about her demise. Who would have thought she would end up selling old clothes on the streets of Johannesburg?

For six years, Nomvete helped draw millions of viewers and contributed toGenerations becoming the country's top soapie.

"But every second I walked into the SABC meant a minute off of my oxygen tank," she writes.

Besides her crossing paths with the show's producers and cast, she had her own "dramas" at home.

Without naming names, she talks about how her peers had turned their dressing rooms into homes. Some of them, she claims, were too broke to even afford to extend their houses.

It's a no-holds-barred account of her fall from grace, a revisit of her abortion, a miscarriage (of a love child), trips to traditional healers to try to prise her polygamous lover from the hands of another, much younger, woman, a brief romance with former co-star Sello Maake Ka Ncube, losing her father to cancer and going broke.

"That particular morning, my landlady paid me a visit. Her message was short and sweet. If I did not come up with the rent in two weeks, she was going to have me thrown out.

"After that visit, I stupidly looked at the fridge, the only piece of furniture in the living/dining area, and then I went to the bedroom to check out the double bed ... I realised that, even if I sold these items, I would not be able to fulfil my obligation to pay the rent."

She later discovered she had "a gift for prophesying".

One day she got the urge to go to the SABC to pray in its corridors and "spread the blood of Christ along its contaminated walls".

" It never occurred to me when performing this seemingly insane ritual that perhaps what I should be doing was asking to see some of the casting departments and see if there was any work available ."

Nomvete plays Mandy Kamara in the popular British soapie Coronation Street.