Jerry Mofokeng on being bullied about his eye: I had problems with myself

Veteran actor Jerry Mofokeng has opened up about bullying.

Speaking to Radio 2000 recently, he described his battle with self-doubt and bullying after injuring his eye as a child.  

“At 14, my eye was injured and because the medicine was still primitive at that point, I ended up with this thick layer on top of my eye. Kids being kids, they forget the rest of your body. They call you by that eye."

He said the incident left him with a major complex.

“I seriously had problems with myself. My own image."

In a previous interview, Jerry told Actors Space that, as a child, he was called names.

“The kids called me Sgili, Lehlo, One-eye Mambazo and it hurt me deeply."

In 2016, the star performed the role of a judge in the play, Acceptance, a story inspired by a South African mother who killed her three children in England in 2014.

The play took on extra meaning for Jerry, because of its themes around disability and dignity.

“You know, I have one eye that doesn’t see. I’ve had to live with the stigma, especially during my youthful days. How often people forget identities and dignities because we focus on or magnify their disability,” he told Pretoria News at the time.