Kelly Khumalo's fight for fame - and her star-crossed love life

Love her or loathe her, Kelly Khumalo is hard to ignore.

For years the flamboyant singer has hogged the tabloid headlines, mostly for the wrong reasons.

She's a virgin; no she's not. She's snorting coke; no she's clean.

Somehow Kelly always bounced back.

But it would be her affair with soccer star Senzo Meyiwa that would plunge this mother of two into her darkest hour this week.

Last Sunday night she witnessed the unimaginable horror of her boyfriend, Bafana Bafana captain Senzo Meyiwa, being murdered.

They had been in an on-off relationship since March 2013 after being introduced by a mutual friend at a dinner party.

Five months into their love affair, Khumalo discovered that Meyiwa was in a customary marriage with Mandisa Mkhize. The two women soon learnt of each other, which led to a public spat between Mkhize and Khumalo and her younger sister, Zandi, on a Johannesburg road on August 27.

The Khumalo sisters found themselves embroiled in a legal battle, facing charges of assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm. Mkhize accused the pair of "pulling her hair, hitting her with keys and kicking her with booted feet".

The 32-year-old Khumalo was also charged with reckless or negligent driving, and with malicious damage to property in that she allegedly damaged the wing mirror of Mkhize's car.

In October last year, Meyiwa broke his silence on his affair with Khumalo in an exclusive interview with The Times, stating that his relationship with Mkhize was "falling apart".

"It got worse last year and we started living separate lives in the relationship.

"But Kelly was not the reason for the breakdown of my marriage."

The 27-year-old apologised to his fans, saying: "It's a mistake I regret and I know I should have known better.

"Sorry I lied," he declared to his wife in the interview.

During the same month Meyiwa and Mkhize made it onto the cover of a magazine.

Khumalo broke off with Meyiwa but she was already a few months pregnant with their child.

Khumalo was born in Natalspruit, on the East Rand, in November 1982.

The petite singer's life started falling apart when she was eight. Her mother, Ntombi, shipped her and her three-year-old sister, Zandi, off to Nkandla in 1990 to live with their grandmother so as to escape the hostel wars on the East Rand.

Kelly felt "abandoned" - put in a taxi without explanation and sent off on the long journey to rural KwaZulu-Natal.

"We cried the whole way. I couldn't understand: if it was so bad and dangerous there on the East Rand, then how come my mother wasn't coming with us?" wrote Kelly in her 2012 book The Kelly Khumalo Story.

Khumalo hated the "poverty lifestyle" of having to live with eight people in a small house, having to fetch water from the river, and living in a place where "meat was a luxury".

Her love of music has dominated her life since she lived in Nkandla.

She dropped out of school at the start of Grade 11.

She entered Crux Gospel Star Talent Search in 2003 but lost to another contestant, Verona.

But the following year was a good one for Khumalo's career. She was signed up by Bonsai Entertainment, which in 2005 released Qinisela. It went to No1 on several radio stations.

Suddenly everyone was talking about the new girl and whether she was a virgin - pictures of her performing minus panties made the front pages of several newspapers. Khumalo threatened to sue.

The young girl from Nkandla had made it big - even if it was for all the wrong reasons.

Around that time her first public relationship, with actor Nathi Ndlovu, made news when he proposed to her on the SABC1 hook-up show All You Need Is Love.

"I never actually said I was a virgin. What I did say was that I wasn't staying with Nathi because I didn't believe in sex before marriage. Little did I realise how this virginity thing was going to get blown totally out of proportion," she said in her book.

Khumalo's relationship with Ndlovu didn't last long and she was briefly linked to former Bongo Maffin member Speedy.

By 2007 her career was picking up: she had two more albums out and was acting on the e.tv soapie Rhythm City as singing party girl Sunay.

She also scored a luxury car, a silver Hummer, a trade exchange, from another manager, Linda Moeketsi.

In 2008 she found herself in the arms of rapper Molemo "Jub Jub" Maarohanye, whom she had met in 2006.

"At first all I saw was the beautiful and fragile part of Molemo. It was amazing. I was so in love; I had a tattoo of his name done on my shoulder. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him and have his child," she wrote.

But she got hooked on drugs and felt trapped in an abusive and tumultuous relationship. All of this resulted in her being fired from the soapie for failing to make it onto the set several times. The same antics also cost her the coveted role of Brenda Fassie in a theatre production.

"On Molemo's birthday in 2009, I took cocaine for the first time. I did it almost as a gift for him as he'd been trying to get me to take it for a while."

In the first year of their relationship Khumalo had a miscarriage but soon conceived again. By the time she was five months pregnant with her and Maarohanye's child, rumours were flying about him seeing other women. And he was never around.

Thinking she could fix things, she bought her lover a silver Mini Cooper, but his philandering ways continued.

"There were many days I wanted to leave him. I would pack my bags over and over again in my head. But I always stayed," wrote Khumalo.

When she gained the courage to leave Maarohanye, in March 2010, she was seven months pregnant - and Maarohanye was involved in the notorious car accident in which four pupils were killed.

She stood by her man. After giving birth, Khumalo was seen in court in expensive clothes, hand-in-hand with the rapper. Then, in October 2011, she decided to leave him for good.

"We were arguing over and over about nothing. Then, in the middle of it all, I suddenly said 'I'm leaving you.'"

Khumalo decided to clean up her act, giving up drugs and concentrating on her music career. She was soon starring in her own reality show and released another album.

And then she met Meyiwa.