Makosi Musambasi is no stranger to controversy.
How best laid plans went awry for Makosi
Big Brother's 'schemer' runs risk of deportation to Zimbabwe
During her stint in the Big Brother house this summer, the 24-year-old cardiac nurse from Harare went from hot favourite to win the reality television gameshow to a tabloid hate figure amid accusations that she was a professional actress and had lied about having sex with another contestant to win the public's sympathy.
But even Makosi could not have anticipated that this weekend, instead of posing topless for the News of the World, she would be facing the prospect of being stripped of her right to remain in the UK. Or could she?
The latest twist in the soap opera that is Makoski's life came last Monday when she was stopped by a policeman while travelling in a car on the M25 from her home in High Wycombe.
Although Makosi, who before entering the Big Brother house had been employed as a nurse at Wycombe hospital, was in the passenger seat she was not wearing a seatbelt. Informing her that she had committed an offence, the officer asked for her identification and she handed him her passport.
The next thing she knew she had been whisked to Staines police station where an immigation officer served her with an order informing her that her work visa had been curtailed because her employment status had changed.
She now has 10 days to appeal against the enforcement order or risk being deported to Zimbabwe.
"I'm really worried," she told the Guardian yesterday. "There are people in my country who believe I humiliated Zimbabweans by showing my tits on telly. They have something called mob justice there, you know."
The Home Office refuses to comment on individual cases, but Makosi claims it had known for months that her work status had changed.
Not only were questions about her immigration status raised by the press during her stay in the Big Brother house but on June 2, three weeks after the start of the gameshow, her former employers, Buckinghamshire NHS Trust, wrote to the Home Office informing them she had resigned her position.
"Why didn't they come into the house on June 2?" she asks, wiping away a tear. "They only had to switch on the telly to find me. Instead, they left me for three months."
But does Makosi, who has a habit of referring to herself in the third person, protest too much? The Sun certainly thinks so. Not content with labelling her a "schemer" and urging its readers to vote her off the show - she came third in the final behind Anthony Hutton and Eugene Sully - the paper yesterday called for her immediate deportation.
Despite her reputation as an actress, Makosi insists her distress is genuine. She claims that before auditioning for Big Brother she asked the hospital for a sabbatical, only for it to withdraw permission at the last moment, forcing her to resign. Realising her immigration status had changed, on leaving the show she took up the offer of free advice from Endemol, the makers of the show, and was put in touch with a law firm, Pennington's, with a view to regularising her immigration position.
This was the situation until Monday. "The officer didn't even ask me my name. He asked for my passport right away," says Makosi, hinting once again at a conspiracy. "Why else would they stop me, unless it was because we were two black girls in a car?"
Her lawyers are adamant she has done nothing wrong. Her work visa was for four years, and if she had remained at Wycombe hospital until its expiry in 2007, she would have been entitled to automatic residency.
Even after she quit the hospital to join Big Brother, her lawyers say, the Home Office could have used its discretion as the show is not ordinarily considered employment - despite the prospect of riches for the winning contestant.
"Makosi has not breached the terms of her visa," insists Philip Barth, an immigration expert at Pennington's. "Having said that, she was concerned, so she approached us for advice. We were in the process of putting her position in the UK on a regular basis when the Home Office pre-empted us."
He would be lodging an appeal in the next few days.
Meanwhile, her tears gone, Makosi has a hair appointment to keep before rushing to her next interview.
Did she have any regrets? "I'm not proud of having had sex on TV. That was a mistake," she says. "But whether working as a nurse or appearing on Big Brother, Makosi's motto has always been to help people and to entertain. Where's the crime in that?"
mediaguardian
