Mourners paid tribute to Hansie Cronje as family, friends and fans gathered for his funeral service at Grey College in Bloemfontein on Wednesday.
The sudden death of the former South African cricket captain in a plane crash in the southern Cape at the weekend left the country stunned.
Paying tributes to Cronje, former cricket convenor Peter Pollock hailed Cronje as a good leader who loved his country and its people.
Cronje’s successor and current Proteas captain Shaun Pollock described the former cricket skipper as an outstanding leader, cricketer and friend.
”We want to thank you for being so much more than that,” Pollock said with most of the cricket team standing behind him on stage. ”He touched each and every one of our lives.”
Pollock also described his former captain as a prankster and recounted many of the jokes Cronje played on his former team-mates.
A tearful Pollock concluded his speech by saying: ”We’ll miss you”.
Cronje’s widow, Bertha, told people at the funeral that her husband was an honourable man, despite his mistakes.
”In the past few days, I realised that nobody forgot the special qualities I always knew he had,” she said.
About 2 000 people attended the service at Cronje’s alma mater.
Most of his former team-mates were present, including rugby players Toks van der Linde and Joel Stransky.
World Cup 2003 chairman Ali Bacher also attended the service despite an initial request by the family that United Cricket Board members stay away.
Sports Minister Ngconde Balfour and ANC chairman Mosiuoa Lekota were also present.
At the end of the service well-wishers put flowers on Cronje’s coffin.
Schoolboys sang: ”Hansie is our hero. He shall not be moved,” before the hearse departed.
Meanwhile, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) chief executive officer Trevor Abrahams said on Wednesday that the on-site investigation into the plane crash had been concluded.
Speaking at Cape Town International Airport, Abrahams said both flight data recorders had been recovered.
Abrahams said some analysis was already under way at a technical facility, but indicated investigations into aircraft crashes took a considerable amount of time.
”There are a number of areas that we need to follow up on, such as technical issues… we need to go into the maintenance records of the aircraft. We need to go into eyewitness reports, much of which has already been collected.
”And we need to do some analysis and I’m unable to give you a time frame when the investigation will be completed,” Abrahams said.
He said the CAA had a responsibility to examine all the information available and make a thorough investigation and that some of the major aircraft crashes in the world had taken up to two years to investigate, some much longer.
”I’m not suggesting we will take that long but these investigations are a lengthy process by their very nature.”
Asked if George Airport could be considered safe, Abrahams said airports were licensed in terms of specific criteria.
”Part of it involves the approach obstructions and departure obstructions. George Airport is 100 percent safe,” he said. – Sapa