Sports Minister Ngconde Balfour and Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota are among several thousands expected to pay their last respects to former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje at funeral services in Bloemfontein and Johannesburg on Wednesday.
The Bloemfontein service, which is being held at Grey College, is scheduled to start at 2pm and will be televised on M-Net and SuperSport 1.
In Johannesburg, Rhema Church representative Pastor Ron Steele said his associate, Pastor Ray McCauley, would hold a simultaneous service in the church’s main auditorium in Randburg.
”Hansie was never a member of Rhema, but the whole cricket team had ties with us,” Steele said.
He also said the church would link up, via satellite, to the funeral service in Bloemfontein at certain points during the proceedings.
United Cricket Board (UCB) representative Bronwyn Wilkinson reiterated on Tuesday comments she made on Monday night.
”The UCB has been assured by a representative of the Cronje family that anyone may attend the funeral… several members of the UCB intend to pay their respects to Mr Cronje in Bloemfontein on Wednesday,” she said.
Earlier, a letter had been sent to the UCB by lawyers representing Cronje?s family, saying they were not welcome at the funeral.
The letter sent to the UCB, from a Bloemfontein-based form of attorneys, Israel and Sackstein, was addressed to cricket board chief executive Gerald Majola.
It purported to be acting on behalf of the widow and family of the late W J Cronje.
The letter requests the entire UCB executive and its affiliates to stay away from Hansie’s funeral on Wednesday.
But a representative from Louise Klopper Communications, the public relations company that is handling the funeral plans, said everyone was welcome at the funeral.
”We have heard about the letter and believe it to be totally false and it was certainly not authorised by Hansie’s family. To do such a thing would be completely childish in the light of such a tragedy.
”Nobody has been banned from attending the service. Many people will want to pay their respects.”
But the Bloemfontein lawyer, Leslie Sackstein, who sent the letter, insisted that a family member instructed him to send the letter to the UCB on Monday morning.
”The UCB said some very unkind things about him while he was alive and now they want to sing his praises, it smacks of hypocrisy,” Sackstein told Sapa on Monday.
”Hansie has a very loyal support base in Bloemfontein and a lot of his supporters are going to be angry when they see some of those UCB members at the funeral. The letter was sent to try and avoid a circus. Hansie deserves dignity to the end.”
Members of the South African national team will also attend the funeral, including captain Shaun Pollock, who is travelling from England for the service.
Meanwhile, Grey College’s deputy headmaster Tommy Cronje (no relation of Cronje’s) said on Tuesday that the school was expecting several thousand people to arrive.
”We are putting up a very large marquee next to the main hall to accommodate additional guests, but we will probably not be able to seat more than about 2000 people comfortably,” he said, adding that people were nevertheless welcome, as long as they didn’t mind standing outside.
Cronje said the school’s computer room would be used as a media centre, as a large press contingent was expected. Louise Klopper, MD of the PR company contracted to oversee the funeral arrangements, said most of the media would be restricted to the computer room, where they would be able to view proceedings on a big screen television.
Klopper also said that Cronje’s widow Bertha had requested ”a lot of roses” for the funeral service, because her husband had been particularly fond of them.
A Bloemfontein florist estimated that about 90% of all business being generated at the city’s florists at the moment was related to the Cronje family.
”We are extremely busy. A lot of people who didn’t even know Mr Cronje personally want to send flowers… it’s getting to the point where our supplies are running out,” she said.
Klopper said the Cronje family would say their final goodbyes to Hansie Cronje at a private cremation ceremony some time after the funeral.
”They are heartbroken and obviously need to grieve privately. We hope people will respect this,” she said. – Sapa