Brenda Fassie has always done things differently.
How many people can claim to have had front-page obituaries written about them while they are still alive? How many can draw the president, the former president and a clutch of Cabinet ministers to their hospital bedside, nogal in the period after an election victory, when cynical electioneering stunts are no longer necessary.
MaBrrr defies descriptions such as pop musician or disco queen — she has always has been more than just her music. She is the ultimate South African icon, combining the populism of Eva Perón, the self-destructive tendencies of Diego Maradona and the insatiable urge to shock of Dennis Rodman.
The current plight of both Maradona and Fassie has prompted critics to wonder to what degree their ill-health is the result of their much publicised substance-abuse problems. The public outpourings of support, the bedside vigils and monetary contributions place the two child-prodigies-turned-heroes way ahead of any contenders for their status as national icons.
And yet, despite her extraordinary exterior, all MaBrrr ever wanted were some suburban luxuries: to extend her mother’s matchbox house in Langa, and to have ”big windows”.
”She eventually built her parents a big house and buried them when they died,” says Stunka Tyiwa, a Langa businessman and neighbour of the Fassies.
Now, in a Johannesburg hospital on the other side of the country from the home she built and the family she buried, Fassie is fighting for her life.
This week, the Langa community met at the local Presbyterian Church to pray for its most famous daughter. ”All local priests were here, there were children, adults and all asking God to preserve her,” says Thandi Tsila, who claims to be Fassie’s sister-in-law by virtue of marrying into the Madiba clan to which Fassie belongs.
She believes Fassie’s problems stem from leaving home too young.
”She did not enjoy her youth. Gibson Kente [the black theatre doyen] took her away [to Johannesburg for Fassie’s first taste of show-business life] when she was just
a child.
”She moved from childhood to being a woman so fast that she missed her youth. Maybe that is why she is having all these psychological problems.”
Yet she understands the choice Fassie’s mother had to make, either to keep her daughter at home in poverty or allow her to move to Johannesburg to seek fame and glory.
”In those days, because of apartheid, there were no opportunities for black people to develop in the Western Cape. It was the survival of the fittest.
”I don’t know for real how she felt but Brenda’s mother had a lot of children and therefore allowing one to leave so that she could fulfil her talent could not have been a difficult decision to make,” says Tsila.
If Bob Marley is the Prophet Nesta to the Rastafari, then Brenda is the high priestess of local, black pop culture.
We have lost count of the number of times she has been written off by critics amid scandals about lovers, drugs, violence, bankruptcy and rehabilitation.
Having staked her claim to pop idolatry in the 1980s with Weekend Special, it was another track from the same album, Life is Going On, which epitomises her struggle. Today, even as she lies in a coma and the press pens tributes to her, life, indeed, goes on.
Her colourful life, tempestuous love affairs with both men and women, her decision to propose marriage to Nhlanhla Mbambo against the dictates of tradition, are all symptomatic of the attitude in her song Uphila kayi I (You Only Live Once).
Fassie’s manager Peter Snyman told the world ”Brenda, as we know her, will never be the same” after the singer was admitted to hospital with suspected brain damage. The same as what? When was Fassie ever ”the same”? Snyman should listen to Fassie’s songs, Ngohlalangije (I Will Remain Like This) or Ubani Ozokufa? (Who is Going to Die)?
In a country of survivors, Fassie is the best; a woman of indomitable fighting spirit and sheer chutzpah. The critics and doomsayers should heed the words of her song Ngeke Umconfirm — never jump to conclusions about another human being. Especially if that person’s name is Brenda Fassie.