When Love Kills: The tragic tale of AKA & Anele

By Melinda Ferguson

When Love Kills is the tale of hip hop star, AKA. whose life unravelled when he embarked on a relationship with 21 year-old Anele Tembe. When she "fell" to her death from the 10th storey of the Pepper Club in April, 2021, after a long night of heated arguing, details would emerge that they'd been caught up in a whirlwind of toxic obsession, alleged substance abuse and violence. Less then 2 years later AKA was assassinated in what looked like a hit to avenge her death. This is their tragic story. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melinda Ferguson Books
• Release date: Apr 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9781990973888

Melinda Ferguson

Melinda Ferguson is the bestselling author of her addiction trilogy Smacked, Hooked and Crashed. She is also an award-winning publisher. In 2016 her groundbreaking title, Rape: A South African Nightmare by Prof Pumla Gqola, won the Alan Paton Award for non-fiction. In 2020 she joined NB Publishers under her imprint Melinda Ferguson Books.

Book preview

Part One

AKA AND ANELE

Chapter One

AKA MEETS ANELE

From a romantic perspective, in many ways Kiernan Forbes (otherwise known as AKA) and Anele Tembe (sometimes known as Nellie) were two star-crossed Shakespearean lovers – an ill-fated modern-day Romeo and Juliet.

We all adore a great love story, which is why, almost 500 years after Will penned his play set in Verona, Romeo and Juliet is still prescribed reading for high school students across the globe. No less than 38 movies have been made of Shakespeare’s play detailing one of literature’s greatest romantic tragedies.

The love story of AKA and Anele, peppered by the makeups and breakups the lovers posted on Instagram and Twitter at every opportunity, was followed and commented on by those who live vicariously through the actions of famous people. These days, there’s even a term for it. On Wikipedia, it’s described as celebrity worship syndrome or celebrity obsession disorder, referring to people who become obsessed with the details of a celebrity’s personal and professional life.

In many ways, AKA and Anele reflected an age in which we’ve become salaciously preoccupied with other people’s lives – an age of rampant social media and narcissistic proclamations. Theirs was a twisted, devastatingly passionate love story fuelled by obsession and alleged substance abuse. It was hugely public and fatally preoccupied with its own self-importance.

And, in the end, it was brutal in its repercussions.

In Shakespeare’s play, the two young lovers die entwined in a tomb after Romeo takes poison thinking Juliet is dead, and Juliet, on seeing her dead lover, stabs herself. But AKA and Anele’s story came to an even more brutal end. Anele died after falling (or being pushed) from a 10-storey building, while AKA was killed by a gun that many believed was fired to avenge her death.

And while the Capulets (Juliet) and the Montagues (Romeo) were feuding right from the start, there was a time when the Forbes and Tembe families embraced each other while lobola negotiations promised to make the two clans one.

By the time the final credits rolled, the modern-day lovers were two dying swans in a twisted Tchaikovsky ballet, their blood splattered across a street outside the Pepperclub in Cape Town and on a pavement outside Wish on Florida Road in Durban, leaving two families heartbroken and torn apart.

We all saw the loved-up pictures of the couple in magazines and on social media. Had there been Instagram back in the late 1490s, we might have seen a lot more of the two Verona kids, too.

AKA and Nellie made a beautiful pair. Anele was gorgeous, with huge, expressive brown eyes, flawless black skin, a lithe, petite body, a stylish wardrobe and a killer smile. AKA, while perhaps not traditionally handsome, oozed charm. He had tattooed-bad-boy rapper swag and a catalogue of hairstyles, and he was blessed with genius talent, sharp wit and loads of charisma. To the outside world, it looked like theirs was a match made in heaven – initially, at least.

But behind the scenes – and, pretty soon, not so behind the scenes – worrying issues began to emerge between the two. Once the initial magic and wonder of their new love had faded, the fighting began ... and oh, how they loved to fight.

Perhaps they’d drunk the Kool-Aid and ignored all the danger signs. They were so caught up with being in love and seduced by the flawlessly filtered image that they presented that they lost perspective as they tumbled into a twisted tunnel of obsession. There appeared to be no escape.

Anyone who has the vaguest inkling of what is deemed to be a healthy relationship could soon spot the huge red flags that emerged as their makeups and breakups became more regular, more public and more violent.

Many of their fights were filmed by both parties, and some of the footage found its way onto the internet after Anele died. It appeared that, throughout their torrid relationship, they’d both regularly threatened each other with public exposure as a desperate blackmail mechanism to regain a mockery of power and control.

Anele would allegedly threaten Kiernan with exposing the great AKA to the world as an abusive man. This is what an abuser looks like, she taunts, pointing the phone camera at Kiernan during one of their many filmed fights.

Kiernan hoped that, by filming their altercations, he would be able to present his side. Panning across a room that’s allegedly been trashed by Anele, or showing a bruise above his eyebrow where Anele has allegedly hit him with one of his awards – these were his desperate attempts to prove his purported innocence and limit future reputational damage.

But there are two sides, a before and an after, to each of the videos and images. What becomes clear on examining some of their fight footage is that neither party is without blame. They are at various times both victim and perpetrator. They are two walking wounded souls, crippled by what could be professionally diagnosed as a deadly addiction to love.

If the tabloids and social media gossip are to be believed, the two met while Kiernan was still involved with the mother of his child: Zinhle Jiyane (now Mohosana), also known as DJ Zinhle. Kiernan had first been in a relationship with her between 2012 and 2016. By the time he hooked up with Anele, they were making a second attempt at a romantic partnership.

(He and his baby mama had first broken up in 2016 after he’d cheated on her with TV presenter and mega brand influencer Bonang Matheba. In a highly publicised scandal, he then left Zinhle – who had just given birth to their daughter, Kairo – for Bonang. Yes, this is real life and not a soap opera.)

After Bonang and Kiernan broke up in late 2017, Kiernan got back with Zinhle. Things looked good for a while. By 2019, it appeared that the rap star might have finally grown up a bit and was seemingly ready to be a faithful partner to Zinhle and a permanent father to Kairo. Then, before the year was over, sources close to the couple claimed that they had been going through a stressful time. It’s during this period that Kiernan and Anele’s paths crossed.

On 2 November 2019, AKA performed at Durban’s International Convention Centre with the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra. (Anele’s uncle, Bongani Tembe, is the CEO and artistic director.)

Moses Tembe recalls his daughter meeting Kiernan Forbes for what he believed to be the first time at that concert, which the Tembe family attended. I had never heard of this man. I only listen to classical music. I knew nothing about hip-hop, but I thought if he could perform with a classical orchestra, then he must be okay, he must be a good man.

One thing’s for sure: when Kiernan met Anele, he was still officially with Zinhle. He was not known for making clean endings and seldom afforded respect to his partner in his breakups. He once told someone in his close circle, with his usual brash bravado, Oh, you know me, there’s always a bit of an overlap.

Starting a new relationship when you’re still involved with someone else is hardly ever a good idea. It’s looking for trouble. Being the other woman also comes with all sorts of baggage and insecurities. It’s highly likely that once young Anele had bagged her Supa Mega prize, she might have spent sleepless nights wondering whether her new beau would not do the same to her – that is, lie and cheat. It soon became a case of be careful what you wish for because while she must have felt like the cat that got the cream, the cream eventually began to curdle.

Chapter Two

MIND GAMES

Knowing that Kiernan had already betrayed a string of women probably played havoc with Anele’s mind. She had just turned 21 when she met him, and Kiernan would turn 32 in late January 2020.

Because of Kiernan’s relationship overlap when things started between the couple, it would have been hard for Anele to trust him fully. Sources close to the couple say that she soon became increasingly obsessed with his phone and his whereabouts as she tried to find evidence of a betrayal.

Over the following year, the relationship appeared to become torturous for Anele – but even so, right from the start, she was clearly smitten with AKA, as he was with her. There was undeniably a lot of love and passion there.

By the time he met Nellie, Kiernan was already Supa Mega, a man of the world. He was a well-travelled and seductively hip and cool superstar. He had millions of social media followers and was allegedly worth much more in rand. By 2019, AKA was probably the biggest deal in local hip-hop. He’d been in the industry for over a decade, was well-known and respected across Africa and had begun making inroads into the global hip-hop scene.

Meanwhile, Anele was hardly a girl from the back-waters of KwaZulu-Natal. As the youngest daughter of the business tycoon Moses Tembe, she’d been brought up in a world of wealth and privilege. She’d gone to a private school and done her fair share of travelling abroad to places like the United Kingdom and France. She’d even celebrated her 21st birthday in October 2019 by getting her father to splurge on a holiday trip to Ibiza – but, in the end, Anele was still just a kid, albeit one dressed up in pricey and provocative clothing.

The question that many onlookers would have asked was: why was Kiernan Forbes going after a girl who was more than a decade his junior? It’s not uncommon to have an age gap of ten-plus years, but it does say something about the power dynamics in a relationship. Did it make AKA feel cooler and more youthful? Anele was a stunner, and he must have felt like the man when he showed her off to his homies and on Instagram. By all appearances, he was thrilled by his latest conquest.

Others wondered about his predilection for black girls. He’d been involved with actress Enhle Mbali (in the early days), Zinhle Jiyane (twice, and she was his baby mama), Bonang Matheba (whom he almost married), Nicole Nyaba (the in-between relationship side-chick) and finally Anele Tembe.

In an interview with fellow rapper L-Tido in late 2022, the host asked, Why are you always dating black girls?

Razor-sharp as always, Kiernan fired back, So, why do you have a coloured baby?

The two of them laughed like bros, and then Kiernan added, Once you’ve gone … you’re gone – clearly playing on the line once you go black, you never go back.

Having a young wife or girlfriend often makes older men appear more relevant or virile, especially in the image-driven, male-centric world of rap. Having a young Zulu girlfriend may have been particularly appealing to Kiernan who’d weathered much criticism over the years for not speaking any vernacular. He’d even been accused of exploiting black artists who rapped in vernac on his tracks. His detractors alleged they were only there to lend authenticity to his profile as an African hip-hop star.

To Kiernan, Anele’s youthfulness was clearly an asset. Soon after they became official, he boasted on Twitter about his new young girlfriend and encouraged his male followers to "Find yourself a lekker 21-year-old, my broer. Trust me."

After twice dating astute businesswoman and top DJ Zinhle Mohosana (née Jiyane), who was five years his senior, and then the mega-successful Bonang Matheba, who was a year older than him, Kiernan must have found it refreshing to be with an unknown 21-year-old. By the time he met Anele, it is likely he was tired of sharing the limelight with two older, high-profile women who had their own money but probably not the time or the energy to play housey-house and shower attention on Kiernan Forbes.

Anele was a young girl whose life was a blank canvas. She appeared to be no threat to AKA’s celebrity stature – she claimed to want to cook and care for him, become his wife and start a family.

Initially, Anele seemed to be equally thrilled to have an older, famous man at her side. She told him that she loved dating someone with life experience who knew what he wanted. While she was hardly a pushover, she must have felt important being with a man like AKA who had dated a string of famous and successful women.

When she first realised she’d bagged the famous rapper, Anele probably felt like the next Queen B. When she WhatsApped her old school friends to tell them that her new boyfriend was the great Kiernan AKA Forbes, the ex of the original Queen B, Bonang Matheba, there was probably an outpouring of admiration, hysterical outbursts of screaming and giggling, and a cacophony of exuberant emojis.

Soon after he got together with Anele, Kiernan released the track Cross My Heart, which references her age and his love for the new woman in his life.

He raps about how he’s been thinking about her every 21 days, and how it’s kinda ironic that she is 21 years old. He says he needs someone to give him his space, and that only God can judge him and put respect on his name. He raps how when she sings his praises, it makes him feel like a king, while alluding to the idea that Anele is feisty and unafraid to put him in his place when he is stuck in his ways.

After the deaths of Kiernan and Anele, the title Cross My Heart took on additional meaning. On one level, it’s a reference to the old saying I cross my heart and hope to die, which is what people say to emphasise the truth of a statement or when they make a promise. It’s as if Kiernan is telling Anele how much she means to him and how little their age difference matters – in fact, it pleases him. On the surface, it’s a sweet love song that reassures her about his loyalty. Anele even raps on the opening lines, which is Kiernan’s way of saying, You matter. You are important. You are captured forever on this track.

On a more sinister level, the song may have been a portent of what was to come: Cross My Heart (I hope to die) could easily be interpreted as a prescient Cross My Heart (we both will die).

Chapter Three

YOUNG ROOTS:

ANELE TEMBE (1998–2021) &

KIERNAN FORBES (1988–2023)

Not only did Anele and Kiernan have a significant age gap, but when it came to their childhoods, they were also born into very different worlds.

Kiernan’s mom, Lynn Reid, was just out of school at 18 years old when she fell pregnant after dating 20-year-old Tony Forbes for a few months. Lynn had been a high achiever – the perfect student and deputy head girl at her high school in Kimberley. After matriculating, she’d moved to Cape Town in early 1987 to study teaching at the University of the Western Cape. She soon met tall and handsome Tony (who was also studying at UWC) at a relative’s house in Bellville where they both were boarding.

Before they knew it, a baby was on the way. On 3 July 1987, Tony and Lynn got married in a shotgun wedding in Oppermansgronde, a tiny Free State village where Lynn had spent her early childhood. Lynn’s teenage tummy was only starting to show the telltale signs of a pregnancy.

Three days after the wedding, Tony celebrated his 21st birthday.

Their son was born on 28 January 1988. Tony was obsessed with sport, so they named their newborn after Kiwi rugby player Kieran Crowley – but somehow an n crept in and their baby was christened Kiernan Jarryd Forbes.

Lynn, Tony and their newborn moved into a small, three-bedroom Cape Flats townhouse in Mitchells Plain, which they shared with Tony’s parents. Despite the cramped space and Lynn having to navigate a whole new world of in-laws, the newlyweds were besotted with their son, who seldom cried and loved to smile and sleep.

More than a decade later, on 11 October 1998, a baby girl christened Anele Tembe arrived – the youngest child of Moses and Lulu Msomi Tembe, and baby sister to Nosipho and Vukile.

Her father came from relatively humble but respectable beginnings. He was born in 1961 in Lamontville, KwaZulu-Natal, and grew up in Umlazi township in Durban. My father was a priest and my mother was a professional nurse before she became a priest and full-time servant of God in 1967, said Moses in an interview for this book.

After matriculating, he studied through the University of South Africa while working as a clerk of the court. I then worked as the chief credit controller for the KZN Development Corporation and that’s where my development skills got honed. In 1990, I got into business on a full-time basis.

Moses’s road to riches began when he established butcheries in the surrounding townships.

By the time Anele (or Nellie, as she was affectionately called) was born, he was a self-made businessman. Today, he’s a board member at several top companies and has won numerous business-related accolades, including the Investec Entrepreneur Award. He is a well-connected man associated with powerful figures like the current Minister of Police, Bheki Cele.

So, Anele was born with a silver spoon in her rosebud mouth, into a world of wealth and privilege. She was the blessed daughter of a business tycoon whose name carried great weight in the KwaZulu-Natal community.

There are many photographs of her with her dad: Moses pushing baby Anele in a pram or bathing her in a bubble bath; the two of them swimming together in a bright blue pool; a young Anele leaning on her dad’s shoulder as they sail a yacht; and a proud Moses standing beside his beautiful teenage daughter before she sets off for a high school dance.

However, Anele’s life was even then not without tragedy.

When she was 12, her beloved mother, Lulu, died after a long illness.

When her mom died, she was obviously affected. It affected the whole family, said Moses. "But I wouldn’t say it affected her more than anyone else. She spoke so well at her mother’s funeral. It was quite emotional for all of us to listen to her.

It also helped that she’d managed to spend a lot of time at her mom’s bedside, because her mother was sick for a very long time. Anele spent many hours with her mom at the hospital, so she was able to say her proper goodbyes, and I would say that her mother’s death never came as a big shock.

Later, there were rumours that Lulu Tembe had committed suicide, but this notion was strongly refuted by Moses. He believes that the misinformation was planted for nefarious purposes, to add credence to the notion that his daughter had inherited suicidal tendencies from her mother.

My first wife died with the whole family gathered around her bedside, he said. The rumour that came out about my first wife committing suicide was a malicious story and only came out from ‘unknown sources’ after Anele died. These people were prepared to go to any lengths to create a false narrative.

After Lulu died, Moses, a hands-on father, took care of his three children by himself for a while. According to Anele’s brother Vukile, who gave an interview to You magazine after she died in 2021, his younger sister was a daddy’s girl who needed more nurturing from a young age.

My dad spoilt her. Anele had always needed much more attention, and as siblings, we were fine with it because maybe she needed it.

According to Moses, Anele had been an amazing child. "She was also feisty to some extent – and whatever she wanted, she demanded – but she was lovely. We were very close to each other when she was an infant. She was a real daddy’s child.

But I don’t believe I spoilt her. Of all my kids, I would say she was the one who suffered the most punishment. I was very tough with her because I had high expectations of my daughter.

A decade earlier, in the Cape Flats, money was tight for Kiernan’s young parents, Lynn and Tony, who were barely out of high school and already raising a child. However, Kiernan enjoyed an abundance of love and attention as he was the first grandchild in the greater Forbes–Reid family. Everyone was besotted with the little miracle who ruled both families’ hearts.

From the moment Kiernan could gurgle, smile, talk and walk, he was led to believe that he was special. As soon as he was on his feet, he began performing. And it was not only his parents who were enthralled by their son; anyone who encountered him became part of his enraptured audience.

Within the first year of Kiernan’s life, Tony Forbes secured a well-paying job with a well-known consulting firm after finishing his studies at UWC as one of the top BSc graduates, majoring in computer science and maths. He soon bought the family their first car, a Jetta. Within a few years, he moved his wife and son out of the Flats to Glenhaven, regarded as the it suburb for