Publications
Just more than a year after Deon Coetzee’s character on 7de Laan, Herman Croukamp, died in an accident, he’s going to appear on TV again.
From 22 November Deon will be seen by Isidingo viewers – but for only a short while, says Micaela Soliani, spokesperson of the SABC3 soapie.
“Deon will play the role of Conrad Scott, Angelique Scott’s father,” Micaela says. “He’s coming to Horizon Deep for a while. I can’t give away the story but it will be riveting.”
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Deon (54) has had a difficult year since leaving the 7de Laan set.
When YOU visited him in November last year on a friend’’s farm near Heidelberg in Gauteng his life was in the process of falling apart.
Apart from not having a job (his contract with 7de Laan hadn’t been renewed) his wife, Tertia (nee Moolman), wanted a divorce after a marriage of only seven months. The marriage was Deon’s third.
Deon and Tertia. PHOTO: Supplied
In September last year Tertia (48) told YOU how Deon had made her life hell during the seven months. He’d psychologically bullied her, screamed at her and even pushed her around, she alleged.
The day after YOU visited Deon in November last year he checked into a psychiatric institution. “I’m going to get good, professional psychiatric help to find out what the cause of the problem is,” he said. “Then I want to ‘reboot’ my head.”
That was his first step on the “right road”, as he put it. On this road he received treatment for his alcohol and drug abuse.
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In November he was admitted to a clinic for six weeks for psychiatric treatment. After that, from February, he spent another six weeks in a rehabilitation centre for those who abuse alcohol and drugs – all because of Tertia’s revelations in YOU.
“When I read it – everything that Tertia said, what I’d put her through – it forced me to search for the problem in myself,” Deon told YOU.
“I knew I had to get professional help. In the clinic I began to understand the reasons for my aggression. Because the frustration of not knowing where it came from manifested in uncalled-for behaviour, in things that caused all the upheaval in my life.”
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For five months Tertia didn’t talk to Deon – until May this year when she phoned him to ask for his lawyer’s contact details. Despite pending divorce proceedings they were soon back together. Tertia had decided to give Deon a second chance.
In June this year, when YOU caught up with the couple while Deon was visiting Tertia in Port Elizabeth. Deon revealed said he’d been free of alcohol and drugs for five months.
Deon's 7de Laan character Herman and his wife Felicity. PHOTO: Supplied
“My whole world changed. I’m clean and sober. Everything looks and smells different. I now enjoy doing things right and not emotionally overreacting.
“I’m not holding anything against anyone. It was my own fault that I landed where I was,” Deon told YOU.
Although Deon said he’d instructed his lawyer to stop the divorce proceedings that he’d instituted, they weren’t stopped. Barely three months after they’d reconciled, the couple were finally divorced in August this year.
Boela van der Merwe, Deon’s lawyer, told Netwerk24 at the time of the divorce that Deon had moved from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth to try to patch things up with Tertia.
“But the wheels had really come off and things didn’t work out between them,” Boela said.
