After more than a month of widespread speculation and amid calls for boycott, rapper Kiernan ‘AKA’ Forbes takes the hot seat in a tell-all interview with news anchor Thembekile Mrototo produced by The Bar Leader TV.
AKA’s 22-year-old fiancée Anele ‘Nelli’ Tembe died on April 11 after apparently falling from the 10th floor of the Pepperclub Hotel in Cape Town.`
The circumstances around her death remain under investigation.
AKA is expected to share his version of events as well as address allegations surrounding his relationship with Nelli.
Speculation of violence in AKA and Nelli’s relationship began to swirl after video footage of an incident between them was leaked a week ago.
Two videos of the same incident were leaked. News24 reported on one version showing AKA breaking through a door behind which Nelli was hiding. Screengrabs showing him breaking through the door went viral.
TshisaLIVE is in possession of another video that a source claim shows the same incident. It shows AKA’s Bryanston home in disarray, with awards smashed and glass broken. AKA narrates in the background, claiming Nelli had tried to jump off the balcony.
A Tembe family spokesperson would not comment on the footage. However, speaking at the funeral on April 16, Nelli’s father and prominent businessman Moses Tembe rubbished speculation that Nelli was “chronically” suicidal.
In a statement sent to TshisaLIVE after the emergence of the footage, the rapper’s lawyer Rudolph Baloyi, senior associate at Mabuza Attorneys, said he wanted to curb speculation and assure Mzansi that AKA is apparently not a GBV perpetrator.
This as Women For Change called for AKA to be muted after Sunday World reported that an alleged close friend of Nelli with “intimate knowledge of the relationship” said Nelli had allegedly been abused by the rapper throughout their relationship.
However, AKA slammed the insinuations in a statement released last week, labeling them as an “attempt to disparage his name and Anele’s character”.