After three years off radio, Zola Mhlongo is grateful to go back to her first love.
She has joined as co-host in the Saturday weekend breakfast show on Metro FM dubbed Weekend Breakfast Sounds Good.
She hosts alongside Somizi Mhlongo who previously hosted the show with DJ Mat Elle.
“It has been a dream of mine. It still feels a bit surreal, I think I will get into it when I see it happening. It hasn’t sunk in, I haven’t digested the news,” she tells us.
She joins a show that has already been pulling great numbers and is arguably the biggest weekend breakfast show in the country.
“Somizi is a character that is robust and full of life, it is not something you prepare for. Anything can happen,” she jokes. “High energy and fun show. Our energies are going to gel very well.”The former Gagasi FM radio host left the station after seven years. She tells TRUE LOVE that times have been tough during the time she was not on the radio.
“The three and half years that I have not been on radio have been the most daunting. It is almost like my life stopped. A lot of things were not necessarily going my way but by God’s Grace, I kept trying. Everything happens in God’s timing.”
Now that she is back on the radio and such an amazing platform, Zola tells us it is all an answered prayer all because she kept saying, “Let me try again, let me try again.”
When she kept trying to get back into radio she kept herself motivated. “I still had my dream. I knew that even though things weren’t going my way, I still had my God-given talent. Time wasted doesn’t mean that your time is denied.”
Adversity, particularly with trying to break into the entertainment industry, is nothing new to her.
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While studying media and drama at the University of Cape Town, she was a news reader for the campus radio station. “I took the plunge that I wanted to continue with radio and the one radio station I aligned myself with was the radio station back home, Gagasi FM.”
She started sliding into people’s DMs asking them to listen to her demo. After much effort, she was given a chance. “I worked there for a year without getting paid, for free. I was trying to get them to see that ‘I’m here’. After a year, she got hired by the station.
“It’s been quite a journey but one that was rewarding in that I got to hone my talent and grow within the radio industry and found a love for broadcasting.”
Zola has a two-year-old son with DJ and producer Prince Kaybee. During the tough time, she also became a mother. She admits that her family has made navigating motherhood easy.
“I have a supportive family who have always been there to support me with being a mother. They allow me to go for my dreams and make sure that everything is sorted back home. My mother and grandmother have been there for me through it all.”
