‘I Never Said Goodbye'

Rebecca Malope opens up on how she was banned from seeing Lundi Tyamara on his deathbed – and how much it hurts. 

- Qhama Dayile

SHE met him when he was a 16-year-old fresh from the country town of Worcester in the Western Cape – a baby-faced teenager with dreams crowding his head and ambition flowing through his veins.

The year was 1995 and Lundi Tyamara had just arrived in Johannesburg in the hope of making it big in the music business – and it didn’t take long for his extraordinary talent to be noticed.

Legendary music producer Sizwe Zako, who was Rebecca Malope’s producer at the time, heard about this young guy with the powerful voice and invited the gospel queen to come to his home and listen to him.

Sizwe’s plan was for Lundi to become one of Rebecca’s backing singers – releasing him into the world would jeopardise her career, Sizwe believed, and he wanted to keep this young singer under his nose in case a rival snapped him up and sent him soaring up the musical ladder.

“We called him a tsunami because of his powerful voice,” Sizwe recalled at Lundi’s memorial service.

Rebecca loved what she saw and heard – and that was it: for three years Lundi went everywhere with her, lending his velvety vocals to her searing ballads.

When he left her stable to go solo they remained close – so close, in fact, they referred to each other as “mother” and “son” until he passed away last month.