Ghanaian actor Adjetey Anang revealed that he purposefully omitted graphic details about his infidelity in his memoir. He explained that his intention was to keep the focus on the ultimate purpose of the book, which is to inspire and empower “young people” to learn from their mistakes, overcome failures, and strive for improvement.
The revered actor confronted by Thelma Tackie on the national broadcaster’s GTV Breakfast programme, had insisted he physically and emotionally cheated on his wife, as said in his book, but it involved no sexual intercourse.
“…the experience [cheating] was hard-hitting [during] the early years of marriage,” he also revealed.
“For me, intentionally, I left it at that,” he stressed, adamant to give details concerning the “physical” range of his cheating escapades.
It is “because the moment you expand that, we lose focus of why this book was set out in the first place,” he noted.
“There is a culture of glorifying negativity,” he said, indicating he had no desire to feed this culture.
“It is high time we moved away from that,” he added.
Africans “do worse” than the West when it comes to painting unpleasant pictures about the continent, Anang asserted, thereafter.
The belief is “negativity sells,” he said.
“How does that develop a nation? How does that develop our society?” he worriedly quizzed.
Anang went further to identify one of the blowbacks of sensationalising people’s private challenges.
“…when you do that when people are going through issues that are real [and] need attention and help, they won’t seek the help – they [rather] cower,” he bemoaned.
Anang desires a society that encourages people, especially those in the limelight “to really search deep [within] and say: ‘Look, these are my weaknesses, I need to confront them to become a better person’.”
The purpose of his memoir, he said, is to speak to struggling individuals, especially “the young people,” that: “Look, what you’re going through is not new. I have been through that… These were the structures that I put in place to get out of it – that’s the resilience – and I fought it. These are the things you can do as well to get out of it.”
He further explained that Adjetey Anang: A Story of Faith, Imperfection and Resilience was published in hopes that it would stop “people from replicating what [wrongdoings] we have done”.
Adjetey and Elom have been married for 16 years and have a son called Ryan.