Actress Pebetsi Matlaila who plays Mokgadi on Skeem Saam has shared the dark truth of a time when she was suicidal because of her abusive marriage.

 

“I remember thinking, if I can manage to these children painlessly, and then myself then they wouldn’t be dealing with this.

I felt like I failed them as a mom.

I felt like I had messed up my life so badly that I had nothing else to live for, and I remember talking to my therapist and saying I was scared of myself and that I might hurt my kids because I had made such a mess of my life.”Pebetsi Matlaila shares the dark truth of a time when she was suicidal because of her abusive marriage

The actress said her marriage was short-lived because she could no longer ignore her ex-husband’s red flags.

Married for just 9-months, Pebetsi shared that no one believed her when she told them her husband was abusive.

“If he walked through this door, you wouldn’t believe he is this person I’m talking about. He’s so humble.

Unfortunately for me, I knew the red flags even before I got married to him.

He had an addiction problem. We were married officially for 9-months, but my relationship with him as boyfriend and girlfriend was about 3-months.”

The abuse became too much for Pebetsi to bear, and she left her marriage when she was still pregnant with her youngest daughter.

In 2021, Pebetsi opened up about almost dying at the hands of her ex-husband while she was still pregnant and took some time to isolate and heal.

Apart from surviving a car accident which almost put her unborn daughter’s life in danger, Pebetsi shared that the birth of her daughter was itself a near-death experience.

“Starting off with an accident while I was pregnant, which almost put my life and my unborn child in danger, and then also having a near-death experience during my delivery – which it actually wasn’t a near-death experience, I died for 3 minutes.

I encountered severe near-death abuse from somebody that I thought I would spend forever with and it keeps getting tough.”Pebetsi shared in 2021 that she was abused in her short-lived marriage