Oti Mabuse

Dance families have a lot of tension in them when you're competing against each other.

And she didn't like that.

And she was like, I'll just do the ballroom.

Let her do the Latin.

But your mum and dad weren't... Were they dancers?

And it was a way out of the... No.

Mutzi had the love for it.

Mutzi was the one who was like, I want to dance and I love it.

And they were like, well, if your older sister's doing it, you have to do it too.

Because I can't be everywhere all at the same time.

Exactly.

And the other one, Pamelo, she didn't really have something that she was...

obsessed with so they're like okay you'll be obsessed with this as well so yeah um and then my mom just became obsessed with it because she just all she wanted to do was protect her little three black kids and so she she was basically our umbrella you know she was like i'm just gonna protect you guys until the end

protecting i'm just wondering regarding the dance schools that you were in was it black um only black kids that you were allowed to dance with yeah uh by then the rules weren't like that but it was just the political stance of the country so yeah we we were we did go to white schools but the dance school was in a black area it was for black kids because we wanted to

My mum really wanted to uplift the township and give kids something to think about and give us... You know, we didn't have high-performing centres, we didn't have after-school care, so dance was their little sanctuary.

By then.

100%.

So we would be in the townships, be in the dance school, live there, and then the competitions were very much white, and they were with white judges in white houses.

We could dance together.

You mean, could we dance together?