BRENDA'S VOW IN CHURCH TO GIVE UP DRUGS

Singer Promised To Leave Her Wild Ways - Then Went Home To Binge On Crack Cocaine

On Sunday morning April 25, Brenda Fassie made a promise in front of a church congregation that she would give up her wild ways.

Hours later she went on a massive drug binge that would cost her her life.

Fassie told members of His Church Kingdom Ministries in Atholl, Johannesburg, that she would bring all the "things" she had been using to them so that they could destroy them, that she had done all the wrong things there were to be done, and that she was "tired of living like this".

But later that day she was back in her Buccleuch, Sandton, home smoking crack cocaine until midnight.  At 8am the following day, the Madonna of the townships collapsed and would never regain consciousness.

Fassie was admitted to the Sunninghill Hospital with heart failure, although it was initially believed she had suffered an asthma attack.  After two weeks on life support in the intensive care unit, she died last Sunday.

This week her lover of two years, Gloria Chaka, 27, who lived with Fassie, spoke out about the truth behind the singer's death.  Chaka was with Fassie when she collapsed and spent three days and nights at her bed in hospital.

"Brenda was at church from 10am to 4pm that Sunday.  She was in a very good mood, shouting 'Praise the Lord' as she walked through the door," said Chaka.

"After that, she called her six dogs, Chicco, Leslie, Mzambiya, Brenda, Bongani and Mafikizolo, to her bedroom and played with them.  But at 8pm she started smoking crack until midnight.

"We went to sleep, but when she woke up in the morning, she couldn't breathe.  While I was trying to plug in the oxygen tank she used because of her asthma, she stopped breathing altogether.

"Brenda had stopped breathing for at least 20 minutes before we got to the hospital.  When we got there, the doctor told me: 'This person is dead.' I saw there was no life in her," said Chaka.

Pastor Linda Gobodo, who had known Fassie since she was a little girl growing up in the township of Langa near Cape Town, confirmed that she had made the dramatic public confession.

" As far as I'm concerned, God forgave her and cleansed her on the last day of her active life.  Her life was not in vain because she had the opportunity to confess to all the wrongs she had done in front of the whole congregation.  Everyone knows her life was a mess, but on the one day she had, she made it right," said Gobodo.

Chaka said Fassie, whom she claimed had been addicted to crack for 20 years, often spent R3 000 a day on the drug and smoked it on a daily basis when they lived together.  Chaka said crack ruined Fassie's life and that she would have been alive today if it weren't for it.

Chaka said Fassie had become "very thin" as a result of crack abuse.  "The first time I met her, she was a size 32.  But recently, she had gone right down to a size 26.  She would say: 'Gloria, look at me.  I'm already dead.  This is not the real Brenda.  It's because of drugs that I look like this.'

"I begged her to stop, even when she was crawling on the floor looking for pieces of crack.  She was always on the floor, searching...  She would pick up a piece of candle wax believing it was crack.

"I would tell her: 'No, it's wax.  What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Tell me, so I can help you.' She would become very angry if she didn't find a piece of crack."

Chaka said Fassie had easy access to crack and that dealers would deliver it to her home.

Fassie was admitted to various drug rehabilitation centres in Cape Town and Johannesburg over the past decade, but failed to overcome her addiction.  In 1995, Poppy Sihlahla, Fassie's lover at the time, died in a Hillbrow hotel of a cocaine overdose.  Fassie was found next to her in a drug-induced haze.

Chaka said she realised within the first few days of meeting her that Fassie was addicted to crack.

Two weeks into their relationship, Chaka claims, she approached the Buccleuch police, told them where to find Fassie's dealers and requested that they arrest them.  She felt it was the right thing to do, "because I didn't want to lose my lover.  But the police told me they couldn't come out."

The couple met at the nightclub Kilimanjaro in Melrose Arch when Fassie was performing there.  "I told her, 'I want to be a star like you.  I love you.  I've loved you since I was six years old.'

"She took me home with her in her Land Rover.  That night, we made love for the first time.  I stayed for two weeks.  She didn't want me to go home.  She said, 'You are my wife.  You're not going anywhere.' "

Chaka said they would often sit in Fassie's room while the star taught her how to sing, or they would go out for supper at a hotel and sleep over.

Chaka also spoke of how ill Fassie had been before she died.  "She suffered from asthma and coughed all the time.  Once, when she was battling to breathe, she said: 'Please take a knife and cut my chest right open so that I can breathe.' "

Chaka said although she and various others had tried to intervene to get Fassie off crack, "she felt that some people wanted to rule her and she didn't want that".

"When she went to sleep, she often asked me to put my hands on her head and pray for her.  She always said, 'I'm scared.  I know I'm going to die.' She knew it was the crack.  She told me, 'You mustn't do this.  It's very dangerous.'

"She tried to hide it from me, but one day, I was cleaning her room and I found crack pipes.  I told her, 'You promised me you would never do it again.  I'm going to leave you.' She started to cry and said, 'I love you, Gloria.  You mean everything in my life.  Please don't leave me.' "

After smoking crack, Fassie would "start moving very fast.  She became very nervous.  The whole night, she cleaned the house and I had to clean the house too, even though everything had already been cleaned.  She paced up and down the rooms in the house.

"In her drugged mind, she became scared of things - she became very scared of a large blue, plastic toy shark which had big eyes and was in the swimming pool.  But three hours later, she wouldn't remember being scared of the toy and would say, 'Where's my fish, Gloria? I want my fish.'

"After smoking, she always wanted to hit me.  She hit me for nothing.  If I went into the kitchen, she would accuse me of wanting a boyfriend or another girlfriend and said I should come back and sit with her.

"I told her all I was doing was fetching a glass of water.  She used to say, 'Do you know why I hit you? It's because I love you.'

"Brenda is my everything - my mother, my father, my sister.  I want to die because of her.  She left me alone.  I want to die and meet her again."

Chaka said that up until this week, she was unable to tell the truth of what really happened because members of the Fassie family - including Fassie's brother Themba - had told her that if she opened her mouth, she would be killed.

But Themba said the death threat was "nonsense" and dismissed Chaka as a "hanger-on".

"Gloria was involved with Brenda, but all she is is a social climber," he said.

In February it was reported that Fassie had thrown Chaka and another gay lover out of her house.  Fassie was quoted as saying: "I don't love them.  I just gave them shelter because they loved me."

Chaka reportedly said Brenda had assaulted her and treated her as a sex slave.  They were reconciled shortly afterwards.

Fassie will be buried in Cape Town on May 23.