Sonia Mbele, was once happily married to businessman Leslie Sedibe. They had beautiful children, but there was more to their marriage than the fans could see. The actress, who was popularly known and loved for the role she played in the popular soapie, Generations, suddenly left the cast to the surprise of fans. Though she was not comfortable speaking about her ordeal in her marriage even after their divorce, she later revealed that she left the show to please her ex-husband, Sedibe.
She has since healed from the mental breakdown she suffered and can now tell her story with ease and confidence as she has rekindled her love for acting and is taking care of her kids better.
How their relationship began is not known as those details were not made public by the duo. However, after dating for a while, Sonia and her ex-husband, businessman Leslie, got married in 2006. Born in Alberton, Gauteng, on 11th December 1976, Sonia was 30 years old and already had a child from a previous relationship when she got married.
Many people thought Sonia got married to Leslie for his money, but she says that wasn’t the case as she married him for love. According to her, their wedding was attended by 1000people, and she contributed to the organization and success of the event. In an interview, she said responsibility in their relationship was shared equally.
Aside from her first child, Donell, who she had before getting married, their union was blessed with two children, Khumo and Mosa Sedibe. All the kids live with her as she strives to be a better mother to them now. She has bounced back to life and healed from the depression occasioned by her marriage and subsequent divorce.
Leslie Sedibe was a jealous lover who didn’t like to see his wife portray another man’s lover on-screen.
despite being loved by so many viewers of Generations for the role she played as Ntombi, the love interest of Sibusiso Dlomo (played by the late Menzi Ngubane), she had to quit from being a member of the cast – in a bid to keep her marriage together.
Her ex-husband was so overprotective and insecure that he was not comfortable when she watched shows in which she acted. As much as this hurt Sonia Mbele, she endured and stopped watching herself on TV in a bid to keep her marriage. According to her, she woke up every morning feeling different about her marriage, sometimes she felt loved, and other times, she felt hated.
Sonia Sedibe had to let go of her role to keep her marriage together, things did not work out for her and Leslie. After eight years of being married, they were divorced in 2014. It was a very messy divorce, with their private lives becoming headlines for celebrity news stations.
According to Sonia, who preferred to remain silent for a while after her divorce until she was comfortable talking about it, she found it very difficult to trust anyone at the time of her divorce because of how information was being leaked to the media without her consent.
During an interview, she opened up about her abusive marriage. Unlike most other women who are mostly physically abused, Sonia said she was abused mentally by Leslie Sedibe. She described him as being so overprotective, insecure, and overcontrolling.
According to the Diep City star, being married to him made her a shadow of herself. Even the people she was working with at that time to pull off the first season of the Real Housewives of Johannesburg (RHOJ) took advantage of how vulnerable she was at the time of her breakup. Instead of giving her the job of a producer, she was handed the intern position, which she refused, and so the first attempt to create the RHOJ reality TV show ended up being a disaster. As a result of everything that was happening to her at that time, she became depressed. It was so bad that she even googled ‘how to commit suicide painlessly,’ but thankfully, she did not go ahead with the process.
In 2014, after the birthday of one of her sons, Sonia Mbele had a mental breakdown. She was so mentally disturbed that she was almost losing her mind. She reached out to a friend who invited her over to spend the night, and while driving to the friend’s place, she grew worse and ended up driving to a mental hospital instead. While there, she could picture herself dying and leaving her children behind.
This ‘vision’ made her decide to beat the depression and make something meaningful out of her life by picking her broken pieces and rebuilding her life. She reignited her passion for acting and focused on her career. In 2018, she successfully pulled off the first episode of the RHOJ as a producer, and since 2018 to date, she has remained the producer of the reality TV show.
Sonia also started giving more time and attention to her three children, who remained with her after her messy divorce. In an interview, she said she was now mentally stable enough to take adequate care of her children. She now prepares them for school and feels comfortable talking to them about her ordeal with her ex-husband, as her children are now grown up and can understand what she is talking about.
After everything that happened to Sonia, rumor had it that she finally found love after being single for a long time. Although both her and the man in question, Vincent Monyake, have denied being in a romantic relationship, her friends were so excited that they could not keep the real truth to themselves.
Sonia Mbele has not been married after her previous marriage experience. She has also not opened up about her current relationship, so we can only wait until she is ready. We have to stick with what we know about that beautiful Sonia Mbele, whose story is a huge encouragement to people facing similar situations.