NAMA award-winning film director Lenni Sibanda found
himself in the crosshairs of city arts practitioners after a former protégé,
Laura Mbeve, claimed that he had used his position to have sexual intercourse
with her.
Before last weekend’s revelation, Mbeve had kept her
twitter followers on the tenterhooks, detailing how a faceless arts guru had
taken advantage of her, using her desperation for a mentor as leverage to ask
for sexual favours.
“I was manipulated and eventually forced into sex by
someone who was supposed to mentor me. Thereafter he started harassing me,
trying to call me almost every day etc,” she wrote on a twitter thread.
“It started off so exciting, I thought wow, so this man won
a Nama award, I’m so lucky he wants to take me under his wing.
I’m a very passionate person and I’m guessing he picked up
on that and used it against me. He made me feel like he was the only one that
was going to help. I fell for it. This industry is all based on cliques and if
you don’t know many people you won’t go far. So I thought, I’m lucky this man
wants to help, the least I could do is not upset him, lest he decides not to
help me anymore. That’s when he started making his advances,” she wrote.
Supporting herself with screenshots from their WhatsApp
conversations, Mbeve detailed how Sibanda had manipulated her.
“I tried not to entertain his advances until he would get
frustrated and threaten to stop working with me or he would pretend to have my
best interests at heart. This man broke me down mentally before he invaded my
whole being. For a while after the whole thing I blamed myself, I still blame
myself, knowing that this man had such unclean intentions with me, I still
allowed myself to endure it.”
Mbeve also revealed that she had not taken the matter to
the police.
“No, I didn’t report him. I feared I would be viewed as a
wh**e that sleeps with men to get to the top. That was not the case and I did
not lead him on in any way. I looked up to him, I trusted him and I was in awe
of him. He knew that and he used that against me.”
While Mbeve was reluctant to take the matter to
authorities, Sibanda said that he would take the legal route to resolve the
issue.
“This matter cannot play out on social media. I trust the
country’s justice system and my wife and I have taken the matter to our
lawyers,” he said. Sunday News
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