Bongani Fassie, the son of the late legendary musician Brenda Fassie, appeared on Mzansi Magic’s show “I Blew It” and detailed how he blew away millions of rands in his younger years.
On “I Blew It”, ordinary and well-known South Africans share their stories of how they blew away their fortune.
Bongani’s story begins after his mother’s death and he inherited her estate. He details how a music executive called him and took him under his wing and helped set up the people who would be handling the estate and advised him to focus on his music.
On the show, Bongani details how he lived the soft life, splurging away on three Hummers: the first one was R100 000, the second, R200 000, and the third, R190 000.
R70 000 for rent, shoes for his girlfriends around R48 000. He also dropped a bombshell by disclosing he spend close to R4 million on narcotics when he began.
“My distribution account was supposed to be R25 million but I never received that amount,” he explained.
Bongani gets real about when things started to go down for him after leaving the record label Ghetto Ruff and having to ask for handouts from the estate lawyer.
“When I’d go there, we would negotiate how much I would get. It was always varying amounts R40 000, R30 000, R25 000, R15 000,” he shared.
After leaving the company Bongani learnt a few hard lessons after losing his intellectual property to the label and the consequences of making certain deals.
“We wound up the estate but there were also a lot of things that happened that I didn’t understand because, at the end of it, I was left with no money.”
The musician does not directly mention the name of his former manager or the people he trusted, that did him financially wrong, but acknowledges that placing his trust in the wrong people was his biggest mistake.
“My advice to anyone who gets any amount of money is that it’s good to have a financial advisor. Someone to advise you on how to invest your money and grow your money. Instead of having all that money in your pocket to spend.”