- Black Coffee sustained
“severe blows” to his body during a “severe travel
accident” on his private plane in January. - He had to undergo a
five-hour-long surgery to treat his injuries. - The DJ spoke about it
for the first time this past week on Kaya FM.
Grammy Award-winning DJ Black
Coffee has spoken about what happened to him after a widely reported plane incident in January.
Black Coffee, real name
Nkosinathi Maphumulo, told Kaya FM host Thabo “T-Bose” Mokwele about
what really happened and how he felt.
“It happened for a minute,
so it gave me time to think while it was happening. I had time to think while
it was happening.
“I had time to hope that it’s
going to be over, and I had time to think ‘okay, we’re dying. It’s over’.
Everything happened and I saw it happening.”
He recalled the incident
happened during an annual South American tour he goes on and said the company
that operated his private flights in the region had no planes in their fleet
for him to use.
The DJ had to find a different
airline.
The second airline only had a
smaller plane to give him, so he took it but said he felt apprehensive about
using it.
“I remember I said, ‘it
looks old’. I even took a picture of the floor and the rugs. I just felt
uneasy!”
Once the flight had reached
cruising altitude, Black Coffee added he took his seatbelt off and reclined his
seat to take a nap.
“I was listening to a
gospel album through my headphones and took a nap then I woke up to something
that felt like a dream … or a nightmare … and the plane was shaking violently.
“I opened my eyes, and
everyone was trying to hold on. At first, because I was sleeping, I felt like I
was in a rolling car.”
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Black Coffee was thrown on the
floor because of the turbulence before he managed to get back into his seat,
but as soon as he did, the plane took a big dip, and the DJ was thrown into the
aircraft’s ceiling as that happened.
He was briefly knocked
unconscious but came too soon afterwards to see various items, like his water
glass and spectacles, strewn around after the commotion.
The DJ felt a sharp pain in his
back and said he struggled to sit after realising he was in pain.
He insisted on landing
immediately and said the pilots were initially against his decision because
they wanted to continue and land in Argentina.
They settled on landing in
Uruguay, where he underwent a five-hour-long surgery to fix the damage done to
his upper spinal cord during the incident.
“So, I have metal holding
onto my spinal cord now. I’m half man, half machine,” he joked to lighten
the mood.
He spent a week in hospital
recovering, and his sister and friend flew out to stay with him and accompany
him home after he was discharged.
Black Coffee said he felt like he had been given
a second chance, which prompted him to revisit his relationship with God.
In a similar fashion to AKA, who
turned back to his religion shortly before he was killed, Black Coffee reached
out to Pastor Kabelo Mabalane for guidance.
“What a beautiful, blessed
man. He gave me a perspective of life and faith that I never knew
existed.”
In addition to his near-death
experience, Black Coffee said his journey had reached a point where he felt as
though his life was not aligned with his purpose.
He mentioned to T-Bose he had
some incredible wins and losses under his belt, both personally and
professionally.
Touching on his marriage to
Enhle Mbali Mlotshwa, the DJ said he felt as though the acrimonious end to
their marriage felt like a failure to him because he had an idea of marriage
that his union did not live up to.
In retrospect, he alluded to
acknowledging his desire to make his marriage fit the picture he had in his
mind bordered on controlling, most times at the expense of the contribution his
ex-wife could make to the marriage and their family.
“Every time I would make a
move that I thought was big for us and it wasn’t received like that, a part of
me was dying.”
He made an example by recalling
when he bought Mlotshwa a car, and she did not react as he hoped she would.
He admitted she thanked him for the vehicle but
said he expected her response to be more animated.
The clip of this moment went
viral, and the DJ was lambasted for expecting that reaction out of her when he
had allegedly repeatedly cheated on her during their marriage and fathered
children with more than one other woman while married.
“I expected her to even cry,
and she was like ‘oh … it’s nice, thank you’ and it sat with me heavily for a
long time as someone who was not appreciative.”
He said he learned he had
mistakenly imposed his wishes on her during their marriage.
“There’s so many of those
things that hit me later. Not to say that I want to try [the] marriage again
but just understanding it where I’m like I could have been easier on that. I
could have taken time on that…”
Black Coffee admitted taking the
time to see where he was wrong and added he has worked on forgiving himself for
the part he played at the end of his marriage.
He did not indicate whether he
has tried apologising to Mlotshwa or making amends.
At the time of his accident,
Mlotshwa shared she had reached out to him to check on him because news of his
what happened to him had troubled their children.
She said he did not welcome the
message from her.
Watch the full interview here.