Johannesburg - The author of the fast-selling book Bare has expressed her initial shock when she first saw a video allegedly of a high-profile businessman performing a lurid sex act on a young rapper.
In Jackie Phamotse’s book she shares how she was trapped in the hands of an influential rich man who gave her access to the life of glitz and glamour but destroyed her emotionally and mentally.
Speaking to The Star about the matter for the first time, Phamotse said associates of the female media mogul married to the businessman have since contacted her and offered her money in order to stop the video leaking to the media.
“First of all the person who owns the rights to the video is a young girl and does not want to distribute the video and does not want to negotiate any price for it,” said Phamotse.
The author set social media abuzz on Tuesday when she tweeted: “Just overheard a painful conversation, a Female TV mogul....Pleading with one of my girls to not share videos of her drunk and her husband rim**ng a celebrity boy!!!!!!!!! What the hell!!!! Kanti what kind of marriages do we have now!!! I have asked to see this video (sic).”
The author of Bare said an associate of the couple had since phoned and accused her of getting involved in a private matter. Phamotse said she had no regrets about going public about the video.
“The friends of the associate, a couple if I could call them that, said to me it is not up to me to disclose what they do in their private space. And my response to that is that I stand for young people and when I see young people get exploited, I want to find solutions to their problems.
“Hence I spoke about it and introduced it to the public. They were trying to conceal the whole issue and trying to find out how much were we trying to negotiate for the video, if we want to negotiate before it gets to the media,” said Phamotse.
She said her only worry related to young people being sexually abused by older powerful men.
“We want to combat social ills, so people’s reputation has nothing to do with us,” said Phamotse.
Picture: @JackiePhamotse/Twitter
This week, in a series of tweets, @JackiePhamotse urged her followers to talk about “social ills”.
“We need to talk about these social ills! Powerful men sleeping with desperate young stars! We can’t just keep quiet. It’s damaging our future men, Fathers & leaders! Guess how this young man will treat his girlfriend? The bitterness in him the pain and shame In the video he didn’t seem like he even want(ed) it.”
Asked about her first reaction when she saw the video, Phamotse stated she was shocked.
“Obviously when you see a clip like that, you become shocked. And you get to wonder what was the intention and why was the older gentleman doing this to this young man. What was the trade-off? What was the initial agreement? Was there consent?” she said.
As expected, Twitter was abuzz under #HockeyClub with many users questioning whether the video existed, while some thought Phamotse did the right thing.
@SiyaDondolo tweeted: “I will stay on Twitter the whole day and night, just in case something gets leaked Who are you talking about?? I’ve been tryna figure it out but no luck.”
@Keaobaka_kb asked Phamotse whether she was checking what people did in their private time.
“Ausi are you now policing people’s lives and what they choose to do in private?”
@lynn_taki said what is done in public can’t be called ‘private’.
“Can’t be Private when the husband does it publicly and most people know, like I know and I’ve seen it.”
Some users offered to pay money for Phamotse to release the video.
@SthembisoMedia