SOUTH AFRICA: She was known as Africa's answer to Madonna, but even that comparison did scant justice to the controversial fame of Brenda Fassie, South Africa's much-loved pop diva who died in a Johannesburg hospital on Sunday. Declan Walsh in Nairobi reports
Drug overdoses, lesbian affairs and headline-grabbing tantrums were pillars of the Fassie legend. But across most of Africa, from sweaty bars in Sierra Leone to the concert halls of Nairobi, she was simply adored as the continent's most popular musician.
Born in Cape Town in 1964, Fassie's piercing voice and fast, catchy songs shot her to the top of the music business in the mid-1980s, where she remained for two decades.
A famously sharp tongue and swaggering manner kept her in the headlines. "I'm going to become the Pope next year. Nothing is impossible," she declared after winning an award in 1999.
But addictions, violence and a scandalous reputation shadowed Fassie's successes. She divorced husband Nhlanhla Mbambo in 1991 amid accusations that he was a wife-beater. Then four years later she was found lying in a cheap hotel room next to a lesbian lover who had apparently died from a drug overdose. Defying predictions of the end of her career, Fassie thundered back with more hits.
Two weeks ago Fassie suffered brain damage following an asthma attack and fell into a coma. But when she died peacefully on Sunday afternoon, it was President Mbeki who paid the most eloquent testimony, describing her as "a Pan-African griot, making souls rise in bliss wherever her voice reached."