Men in power take advantage of girls they should be fathering – Khanyi Mbau

Actor and TV and radio personality Khanyi Mbau received praise for her words of wisdom following last night’s episode of The Big Debate. Among other topics, the episode explored how political parties had turned to using attractive young women in their election campaigns in a move that has been highly criticised.

It questioned if these women campaigned for parties because they truly believed in their values or if they went where the money was, a question that was also posed to Mbau, who is an ANC supporter.

Host Redi Tlhabi asked Mbau: “Whether you accept the title or not, you are seen as the original slay queen, supporting the ANC politically, have you found a home in the ANC or are you just profiling whoever is the highest bidder?”

In her response, Mbau said she found being labelled as an original slay queen “really sad” because she came from a generation of driven people. Though she was an ANC supporter, Mbau said there were some things that needed to be revisited, regarding values, because of the society that looked to abuse its powers instead of helping those in need.

She said the problem was that, instead of helping young women, men in power were abusing their power, and unfortunately, the women took the bait because they wanted to “make it” and show it to the world through social media. Their desperation, according to Mbau, had reached a level where they would even sleep with these men for the money and publicity.

She said: “Unfortunately, we belong to a society where those in power take advantage of that because they have the resources and they see the hunger in young women such as myself, they then take that and abuse it and obviously women will take the bait and run with it because they want to make it.

“Men in power at the moment are those that run the castings, that run the jobs, that have the opportunities to give them the mileage and visibility and in this country, unfortunately for the millennia, it’s about being famous and being seen on social media, and the more numbers that you have and if any man comes to you and says, ‘I’ll give you R50,000 for you to be a part of this campaign’, they’ll do it regardless of whatever it means, but if it also means I’m sleeping with them, girls will do it because young women want to make it.

“We look at the Western world and we look at these girls that drive these amazing cars before the ages of 30 and these are what African children want but it’s the people in power that are taking advantage of these girls. They should be fathering them and teaching them how to do it themselves and that’s where the slay queen thing got lost.”

Her response was celebrated both in studio and on social media by those who said she had highlighted one of the biggest problems in our country and also called for something to be done about it.

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