| Brenda Fassie, the legendary South African pop | | | | did Bishop Desmond Tutu and other famous black |
| singer who sold millions of records across Africa | | | | South Africans. |
| and around the world, died in a Johannesburg | | | | Five years before Fassie arrived, Soweto police |
| hospital on May 9, 2004 after spending 13 days in | | | | opened fire on 10,000 protesting students |
| a coma. The post-mortem said her final dose of | | | | marching peacefully from Naledi High School to |
| cocaine was the cause of death. She was only 39 | | | | Orlando Stadium. In the events that unfolded, 566 |
| years old. MaBrrr, as she was affectionately | | | | people died. The impact of the Soweto Uprising, |
| nicknamed by her fans, had tried to resolve her | | | | as it became known, reverberated throughout the |
| severe addictions over the years at various | | | | country and around the world. Soweto became |
| treatment centers - in fact, more than 30 times - | | | | the stage for violent state repression and the |
| but, unfortunately for MaBrrr and her millions of | | | | roaring social and political oven in which Fassie |
| admirers, she never found a truly successful drug | | | | forged the direction of her music - by the |
| rehab program. | | | | mid-'90s, she was the unequivocal voice of black |
| Fassie, the youngest of nine kids, was named | | | | oppression. But she had also formed a drug |
| after Brenda Lee, the American singer. Her pianist | | | | addiction so strong that it managed to resist one |
| mother let her earn money by singing for tourists | | | | treatment program after another. Without access |
| in the streets. In 1981 at 16, Fassie left Cape | | | | to a real drug rehab, Fassie was unable to break |
| Town to seek her fortune as a singer in | | | | the habit. |
| Johannesburg's Soweto district. Soweto, short for | | | | In 2001 Time magazine dubbed Fassie "The |
| "South West Townships", had long been under the | | | | Madonna of the Townships" and indeed she was. |
| grinding heel of South Africa's white supremacist | | | | Fassie managed to combine ground-breaking |
| apartheid policy. Poverty, drugs, alcohol, | | | | musical success with a personal accessibility and |
| prostitution, illness and crime were rampant, and | | | | human fallibility that drew a fierce loyalty and |
| drug rehab facilities as we know them today | | | | protectiveness from fans. Her career was |
| were virtually unknown. But there was art, there | | | | studded with record sales and awards, but |
| was music, there were night clubs to sing in and a | | | | punctuated also by periodic scandals, recurring |
| vibrant culture was being created by Soweto's | | | | battles with drug addiction, and lows in her musical |
| people. Nelson Mandela lived there for years, as | | | | career that saw her written off by the press. |