What do you get when you mix-and-stir Thembi Seete...
... with the life of a hasbeen?
Answer: Bongi Diamond.
Doc's hasbeen ex-wife on Rhythm City.
She arrives on the scene on Thursday 30 July and she's no problem at all. NOT.
She's a handful and she's on a mission to win back her previous life. She wants Doc, her daughter and her former glory. This is her official character biography that Thembi worked from:
Bongi's tale is tragically familiar - a star that burned out too fast. She had the perfect life: Married to Doc, with a young child, Zinzi, and living the high life as a successful pop star in the early 90's. Then Doc got into recreational drugs. He introduced Bongi to this world and her addictive personality took over. She spiraled and lost everything.
When we meet Bongi, she's a washed-up hasbeen, desperate to reclaim her former glory. She's still very much in love with Doc (and he is just as drawn to her, even though he knows she's bad news). But like a lot of addicts, her sense of shame has withered away, along with any sense of empathy for others.
Bongi is willing to do whatever it takes, and use whomever she wishes (like Zinzi) to achieve her own ends. She's smart, charismatic, and still has that X-Factor that made her a star. But years of drug abuse, and getting beaten down by life have dimmed her light a little.
She's a skilled manipulator, able to bend the sympathy of others. She paints herself as a tragic figure, but the lengths she goes to only highlight that most of her façade is exactly that, a façade.