by Thinus Ferreira
The singer Yoti Loizos (71) and the musician Saranti Reeders (60) have died from Covid-19 as South Africa is swamped by a massive surge of coronavirus cases in a third wave of the global pandemic fuelled by the Delta variant.
"She is gone. Passed away this morning. Beloved Saranti Rheeders. Covid. She was full of light, jokes, super smart and talented. My heart goes out to her son Cole and loved ones," the singer Amanda Strydom wrote on Facebook on Saturday.
Saranti Reeders who worked as a former sound engineer at the SABC for 8 years, also worked as a vocalist, pianist, arranger and composer and was best known as one of the musicians in the former music game show Liriekeraai that had several seasons on kykNET (DStv 144).
The single mother started and was the owner of Saranti's Music School where she gave voice and music lessons, and had served as the musical director of several stage musicals over the years like Scribble (1998), Love, Crime, and Johannesburg (1999), the cabaret Swartskaap (2005), pantomimes like Sleeping Beauty (2007), and Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story (2018).
As actress, over the years she also had roles in kykNET TV soaps like Villa Rosa and Getroud met Rugby, played Ami van Tonder in Binnelanders and had roles on stage in plays like Susters van Eva (1999) and Die Kabaret (2001).
Getroud met Rugby in a statement said "It's with great sadness that the entertainment industry must say goodbye to yet another formidable actress. Saranti Reeders, we as your Getroud met Rugby family will miss your friendly smile a lot. Rest in peace."
Pedro Kruger who appeared with her in Liriekeraai in a Facebook entry said "Enough now Covid! Rest softly Saranti, you incredibly talented human. Nobody would ever pull off purple as good as you could. I'll always listen to the bassline and remember and treasure other memories. We were a formidable team".
The singer celebrated his 50th year in the music industry in 2020 and have released several music albums over the past decades.
On Facebook his friend Manie Jackson who had worked with the singer for 22 years said "it is with great sadness that I announce that the singer and my friend of years, Yoti Loizos passed away on 1 July from Covid-19. With our last talk, 2 days ago, he was still very positive, but his lungs were rather damaged."
Manie said that he would be doing live-stream a Facebook concert on Sunday afternoon at 15:00 as a tribute to his friend.