Johannes Kerkorrel, the Afrikaans alternative stage musician, died at his holiday home at Kleinmond near Hermanus on Tuesday.
Ralph Rabie, who used the stage name Johannes Kerkorrel, apparently committed suicide, said Western Cape policeman Captain Ettiene Terblanche.
”Ralph John Rabie (42) was found hanging from a tree at the Kleinmond holiday resort shortly after midday on Tuesday,” Terblanche said.
Terblanche added Rabie had been found by police and a police post mortem would be conducted soon.
Kerkorrel sprang to prominence in 1986 when he went on stage in a satirical political cabaret at the Green Room in Cape Town.
In the same year he moved to Johannesburg, his birthplace, to join another political cabaret before he embarked in his singing career with artists such a Nataniel, Koos Kombuis and Gerrit Schoonhoven.
Kerkorrel was also a member of the alternative Afrikaans group, the Gereformeerde Blues Band.
As an alternative musician he fell foul of the conservative Afrikaans establishment because of his criticism of and rebellion against the autocratic nature of the apartheid government of the time.
Kerkorrel also worked as a journalist for several Afrikaans newspapers in the 1980s.
He leaves his divorced wife and a teenage son. – Sapa