Apparently, she was “muscled out” of her own brand.

Bonang Matheba was apparently bullied out of her own wine brand, House of BNG. The brand mainly produces sparkling wine which fans seem to have enjoyed, especially because it is linked to the local media star.

On 12 October, Bonang hosted a Twitter Spaces session that attracted more than 16 000 listeners. In the session, she announced that she was parting ways with her management company for “unsavoury behaviour”.

She did not mention any names in the broadcast, but shortly after the announcement, CSA Global fired back instantly. They said that their relationship with Bonang broke down after she broke multiple contractual agreements.

The Sunday Times latched onto the story and reported on 17 October that the fall-out between the client and company revolved largely around her sparkling wine brand, House of BNG. The publication reported that Bonang was muscled out of the brand and that CSA Global allegedly negotiated directly with House of BNG, cutting her out as shareholder.

Following the news, Ntsiki Mazwai’s old tweets about Bonang apparently not owning House of BNG resurfaced. A blog post she wrote about her research also started doing the rounds.

“A few years ago we were told Bonang had a champagne range. We as black people swallowed this up quickly despite us knowing black people don’t really have vineyards. We didn’t ask any questions. We had a new winemaker to celebrate. The media did EVERYTHING to promote the new sparkling wine, from print, to digital, to TV, white capital promoted this sparkling wine,” wrote Ntsiki on her blog Ntsiki Mazwai.

According to Mazwai, the wine was originally from Woolworths and it was not selling, at all.

“On researching the wine I found that it was a Woolworths wine by some white dude. It had always been on the shelves and wasn’t selling. Basically, they put the brand Bonang on it, to sell to a new market… blacks,” she continued.

“This is where white people fool us, they put our faces in the front while they make all the money. While the marketing will have the black woman loved by South Africa, the economy part of it, is going to Woolworths. It’s not Bonang trading as a public company in the JSE, it’s Woolworth,” she added.

Back when the blog was first published, tweeps were quick to throw Mazwai with hate. Now, people are calling on each other to apologise for their behaviour as it appears that Mazwai’s claims were true.

We lose nothing for apologizing what we did to Ntsiki, she has been telling us the truth that we aint ready for, https://t.co/yitSUKGPhP

— Gee (@Munyai_Gundo__) October 17, 2021

You’ll said @ntsikimazwai was a hater when she said in a nice way Bonang was a token..well today you’ll owe The Queen of facts an apology!! https://t.co/TW9t1qkuPV pic.twitter.com/c2huCF8RS2

— #UmgodoyiBuster (@ThantshaKhathi) October 17, 2021