A quick glance at Kwa Mam’Mkhize’s Instagram account, where she appears dripping in Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Fendi, can just as easily prompt an eye-roll as a rush of envy. But Durban businesswoman and actor Shauwn Mkhize is unrepentant. “I have prayed for years for peace, it took me so long to be this happy,” she said.Last month during lockdown, Mkhize posted a video of herself leaving home in a cocktail dress, then giving a speech at what appeared to be a dinner party. The ex-wife of business tycoon Sbu Mpisane told the Sunday Times it was not a party, but she would not elaborate.

In a rare interview last week, Mkhize said her wealth — including a La Lucia mansion, a fleet of impressive cars, a walk-in fridge and a closet full of designer clothes — had been decades in the making. And while money was a source of freedom and independence, Mkhize said her divorce last year paved the way for peace, one thing money could never buy her.“This has always been my personality, but sometimes when you are in a marriage there are things that don’t come out,” she said. “The people who I went to school with will relate to who I am now because this is who I have always been.

“It is like when you put somebody in a cage or in jail and the feeling when they come out… the life I have now is exactly that feeling. I will never trade it for anything.” Mkhize said she married too young, when she was 21, and she and her former husband grew apart.