In the most recent episode of the “Engineer Your Life” podcast, the controversial Matthew Lani, sat down with host, Lungelo KM to share his life story.
During the hour and 14 minute long interview, the fake doctor delved into his childhood, his tertiary education and his obsession with becoming famous and rich.
“Matthew Lani is a personality, Bongani Lani is a person. Matthew is not even my ID name. Bongani Lani is born in Joburg, but raised in the North West by a single mother. My dad is Xhosa, he died when I was eight months old,” shared Lani.
He added that he didn’t feel the void of not having a father due to his mother’s “brilliant” parenting.
The bogus doctor continued to share that when he was growing up he always wanted fame and fortune.
“Growing up I always knew I was going to be famous and rich. Throughout high school I did presenting and all of that, so I always thought that I’ll go into the entertainment industry, but at the same time there was this thing in the health industry that I just liked, but it was more of a plan B.
“At first I did psychology, I dropped out after a year ... I went to medical school at WITS. On my fifth year my mom lost her job.
“She was a domestic worker so her employers paid for my studies, their relationship didn’t end that well. That led me to live with my ex and things happened there, so I didn’t complete my studies,” he said.
Delving more into his past relationship, Lani said that his ex started off as a caring person but things took a turn when he became financially dependent on his ex-partner.
“At the start it was a very caring relationship ... even when all this drama happened, he was the first person to come to the rescue for me.
“He became the person who was taking care of me financially ... then that narcissistic tendency came in full force ... I am not a submissive person, I am not going to humble myself and I think people on social media have seen that.”
He agreed that he was being abused by his ex-boyfriend.
“It started with emotional abuse and then it became physical ... When he cheated, he’d tell me that I had no authority to say anything because I depend on him.”
Lani also disclosed that he got infected with HIV in 2019, and he left the relationship in 2021 and suffered from depression.
“When you are infected and the person is here, there’s that comfort ... When I felt then the reality hit.”
Lani talked about becoming an advanced HIV and AIDS clinician and working with those with HIV/AIDS. He also claimed to be working for an NGO.
“I decided to start social media accounts. We had to come up with different characters and that is how Dr Matthew came about. We trademarked Dr Matthew. This was to humanise the education (of HIV) and simplify it.”
Regarding campaigns that he had worked on with major brands as well as the Department of Health, he said: “On my TikTok, the one that got deleted, there was a disclaimer there, so when these brands approach, we would always give them a disclaimer for them to acknowledge and sign ...
“The Department of Health approached me based on the fact that I had a huge following.”
When he was asked why he hung onto the social media fame despite it causing him legal drama, Lani responded: “On a live I would have 22k people, people had to pay to comment, a good 15k or 10k, each and every one of them would pay a subscription and because Dr Matthew Lani is trademarked, the more you use my name the more I make money.”
The bogus doctor also cleared up misconceptions regarding his viral TikTok videos.
Watch the full podcast below.