'All of us loved Brenda'
2004-05-22 14:43
Cape Town - President Thabo Mbeki joined 10 000 fans in a packed stadium on Saturday to bid a last farewell to pop diva Brenda Fassie at funeral services that briefly turned into a mob scene.
Nine people were taken to hospital with minor injuries when mourners broke through a security barrier to get closer to Fassie's gold-coloured coffin, police said.
Police managed to calm the crowd that packed the stadium in Langa, a township of Cape Town, where Fassie was born and shot to fame at the age of 19 with her first big hit "Weekend Special."
Fassie died on May 9 in a Johannesburg hospital, two weeks after an asthma attack caused cardiac arrest and left her in a coma. She was 39.
"All of us loved Brenda and her music, which is why we are here in our thousands," Mbeki told the mourners.
He spoke of Fassie's known drug addiction and said it was a problem that needed to be addressed in the artistic community.
"We wanted Brenda to live to her 80s. We need to ensure that we save our artists from those problems," he said.
Fassie was equally famous for her piercing voice as she was for her rebelliousness that provided tabloid fodder, admitting publicly to drug abuse and numerous love affairs with both sexes.
Despite fighting a debilitating drug addiction and the death of her lesbian lover in the mid-1990s, Fassie made a comeback in 1998, winning several South African and African music awards.
Fassie's sister Caroline Fassie told mourners that her sister had shown talent from a young age.
"She had crowds roaring from the tender age of two," she said.
"She captured the hearts of many. Her mother was often heard saying 'she is going to be just like Elizabeth Taylor'."
Fassie also gave voice to the aspirations of black South Africans under apartheid, with songs such as "Black President", an hymn to Nelson Mandela who was serving out a jail sentence for his opposition to the white regime.
"All South Africans can be proud of Brenda Fassie because she supported us during the apartheid years in our struggle. Those were difficult times and she was always there for us, inspiring us with her music," said Tilly Lewis, 50.
"Brenda worked her way up and she opened the door to success for some many other people from Langa. She was very down to earth. She bought her mother a beautiful house and supported her family," said Fagmieda Young, 60, a woman from Langa, who said she knew Brenda when she was a girl.
Fassie was hospitalised on April 26 after suffering from cardiac arrest that left her in a coma, brain-damaged and breathing with the help of a respirator.
Funeral services were due to be held a week ago but were postponed to allow Mbeki and other senior officials who were in Zurich to push for South Africa's bid to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup to attend.