Manaka Ranaka reflects on daughter’s passing

South African actress Manaka Ranaka recently reflected on the day of her 24-year-old daughter Katlego Ranaka’s tragic passing in January 2025.

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Manaka spoke candidly about the events that led up to the day she found out her daughter had passed, from being stuck at work to receiving the heartbreaking news.

Living on a prayer

The Stokvel star shared on a podcast with Relebogile Mabotja about a personal moment the night before the tragic call came through. She recalls coming home from visiting her daughter in hospital on a Wednesday night.

“I did a prayer. I don’t normally pray out loud. That night I prayed out loud, and I spoke to God, and I made all the promises that any mother would make,” she narrates. “You know, ‘I’ll be a better mom if I’m a bad mom,’ ‘I’ll tweak where I have to tweak,’ but I remember saying ‘Your will.’”

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“It was a weird morning”

Manaka then narrates the morning of the day of her daughter’s passing, reiterating the ‘weird’ feeling she felt on the day. She notes the weird feeling after receiving a call from the hospital in the morning asking the family to rush to the hospital.

“Already, there’s something.”

Thereafter, the 47-year-old asked her mother to go to the hospital on her behalf, as she still had work to finish.

“So we have this new actor on set, and it was his first scene with me, and I couldn’t give him [a satisfactory performance],” The Generations actress explains.

However, everyone else was satisfied and wrapped the shoot, which allowed her to get to her phone.

“As I get there, I see a missed call from a few minutes ago. So I call, and then she tells me,” she said.

The actress expressed how difficult an experience losing a child truly is: “Even now as I sit here, it’s not an easy thing to talk about.”

Also see: Manaka Ranaka shares grief over her daughter’s death