Berita's husband blames Nyovest, publicist for marriage breakdown

THE break-up of the marriage between Zimbabwean songbird Berita Khumalo and South Africa's Nhlamulo "Nota" Baloyi took a new twist last week, with the music personality blaming rapper Cassper Nyovest's fans and her publicist for causing a messy split that is playing out on social media.

Berita announced that she had broken up with Nota, who is still at loggerheads with various individuals in the music industry in South Africa, a few weeks ago after he went on a misogynistic rant against socialite and influencer Mihlali Ndamase.

In one of her tweets, Berita suggested that she feared for her life because of Nota's erratic behaviour.

"The day I decided to leave my marriage is the day I had to choose between being married and being alive," she tweeted, telling her fans and followers that she is no longer married to the media personality.

In a podcast last week however, Nota claimed that his estranged wife did not make the statements attributed to her as they were coming from a publicist that was trying to paint him in a bad light.

He went on to say that she could not have tweeted certain things attributed to her as she was back home in Zimbabwe.

"This person should not be using the twitter account because they work for a company, Warner, so they should not be tweeting from the account but they are still doing it because they're addicted to the accounts with blue ticks. She was covering up for this publicist that had painted them into a corner. And with that happening, I'm busy speaking to her family," he said.

Nota, who has had various harsh social media exchanges with Nyovest, claimed that the rapper's fans were responsible for not only running his wife off twitter but the death by suicide of actor Patrick Shai. Shai took his own life after an attack on Nyovest that was widely condemned on social media.

"The man's fans killed him (Shai). Literally killed him.

The man's fans have been attacking my wife. When she says that she's gone through trauma, she has. She is not even on the twitter (account). She has even stopped opening the twitter account.

The only person who actually tweets from that account is the publicist that's why I'm actually saying I am confident that's it's the publicist.

She even twitted Metro FM this other day that she likes this new show with Mo Fleva and Khutso Theledi and I was like how because my wife is in Zim, how can she be listening to Metro FM," he said.

Nota, who has been living apart from the singer since January, also claimed that there were outside influences that had turned his wife against him. He also claimed that he and Berita rarely had a harsh exchange of words.

"I'm the greatest pleasure to be around. The problem is that in the public eye, there are too many outside influences.

And the problem with the outside, whether it's on twitter or whatever is happening on the timeline ends up affecting your household because people are sending messages to the house.

People are saying your husband is doing this and that.

So basically, they are painting a certain picture and it depends on who those people are.

"So certain people are now in your partner's ear and it depends on who your partner is as well and what kind of personality they have.

My partner and I never used to fight and that does get problematic as well. Because imagine me, not knowing that I'm right about something and just letting it go.

The only reason I do that is either I am being manipulated into doing that or I'm dealing with someone who if I object to a certain thing it will become a big deal," he said.