As a child, unathi grew up in Grahamstown, the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. She started her career as an actress at Victoria Girls High School and went on to study media at Rhodes University.
She has worked in several different spheres of the entertainment industry including singing, music, television and film. She was the presenting host on TV show Popstars and also appeared as a judge on Idols. She was also a co-host on the Castle Loud, YFM and Kaya FM radio shows.
In 2004, she began a successful radio career with YFM where she was the presenter for a number of popular shows such as the Top 10 countdown, The Biggest Loser and Hottest Hits. In 2010, she joined the judging panel of Idols and has been there ever since.
When she was 14 years old, she was on the judging panel of The Voice SA and also appeared on Idols South Africa as a guest. In her spare time, she writes and acts in her own plays.
After graduating from university, she travelled the world, working as an actress and radio personality. She has also done voice-overs for a character in the edutainment series, Doc McStuffins, which is produced by Disney.
On the day of her death, she was at the Strandfontein Pavilion and had been in a class fire drill. She had just stepped out of the classroom when her five classmates started pushing and bullying her. When she fell, her friends laughed and said she was down in the sewer. It was a funny story, but the truth was far less amusing. They lied to the police about what had happened. Their crime was ruled an accident and the case was closed. Then a few months later, some of unathi’s classmates began getting strange messages on their Facebook messenger. These messages were titled “They Pushed Her” and warned that if they didn’t own up to their crime, they would suffer horrible consequences.
