The brother of a Congolese car guard who was killed in a car crash in Plumstead says a decent burial will cost thousands of rand.
|||The brother of a Congolese car guard who was killed when he was hit by a car in Plumstead early on Sunday says it is going to cost thousands of rand for a decent burial.
Dudu Nbombasi wants his brother Fabrice “Rasta” Ndombasi, 25, to be buried in his home country.
The five friends in the car – Dudley Adams, 24, Baden Philander, 27, Neil Asia, 24, Ruwahn Gordon, 22, and Ezra Pieterson, 25 – also died in the crash outside the Chilli Bar nightclub.
“I need help. My brother has to be buried in his home. We buried our mother three months ago… my heart is very sore.”
Ndombasi, 35, who works as a security guard in Muizenberg, said he needed about R18 000 to fly his brother home to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“I don’t know where to start. For the past four years Fabrice and I have been working hard in South Africa to take care of our 60-year-old father back home. It was just me and him. He was still so young.”
Ndombasi worked as a car guard outside the Chilli Bar, which the car narrowly missed before crashing into a shop nearby.
Chilli Bar owner Sonny Naidoo said he was making plans to have a well-known comedian perform at the club’s comedy night on Thursday.
The entry fee would go towards Fabrice’s funeral.
On Monday Naidoo said that if the crash had happened five minutes earlier or later, there could have been more victims. The club was closing for the night, and Naidoo had walked back inside to tell his staff to start letting people leave.
Patrons rushed outside and tried to help the men trapped in the car.
In Lavender Hill, Jennifer Isaacs, 45, said she was still “in shock” and still could not believe her son Philander and Asia, a relative, were gone.
On Monday evening, Isaacs and the other three grieving families visited the crash scene to lay flowers and “say their goodbyes”.
Isaacs said Philander and Asia would be buried at the Plumstead cemetery on Saturday morning and that they were still finalising memorial services.
A funeral for Pietersen will be held at Christian Family Fellowship in Steenberg Industrial on Thursday at 9am, said his mother, Marleen Pieterson, 57.
One of Adams’s relatives said they were in the process of finalising funeral plans for Adams, but that the service would probably be held on Saturday.
Gordon was buried on Sunday in accordance with Muslim tradition.
Police spokesman Captain Frederick van Wyk said there was no new information in the case, and the investigation of the crash was continuing.
nontando.mposo@inl.co.za - Cape Argus
