The doctor who examined AKA soon after Anele Tembe’s death says he found the rapper covered in fresh scratches and bruises.
That testimony landed in a Cape Town court on Tuesday (October 20). It came just a day after AKA’s father publicly questioned how those marks had been described.
According to TimesLIVE, the doctor found marks on AKA’s left forearm, right leg, right knee and neck. He told the court the injuries appeared to come from both sharp and blunt objects.
“The physical examination was done on the patient after exposing his full body. He had many fresh scratch marks,” the doctor said.
He described AKA, whose real name was Kiernan Forbes, as cooperative during the examination but stressed and agitated. The doctor said he could not get a clear account from the rapper of how he got the bruises.
Tembe was 22 when she fell from the 10th floor of the Pepperclub Hotel on April 11, 2021. She had been staying at the hotel with AKA, who was her fiance at the time.
The doctor’s evidence followed pushback from Tony Forbes, AKA’s father. Speaking to Eyewitness News, Forbes said claims made in court on Monday about scratches on his son’s back did not line up with the medical report. He said that report listed no scratches there.
He asked why nobody had tested those claims or questioned the gap between the two accounts. Those are the father’s claims, though, and not findings by the court about how Tembe died.
Monday also brought testimony from forensic analyst Jeremy Philander, who told the court he had traced the fall. His work found that Tembe could have jumped or been pushed. It could not settle which one actually happened.
Philander did rule one thing out. In his view, a slip and fall did not fit the physical evidence.
The road to this courtroom has been a long one. The state first chose not to file charges after reviewing police forensic reports, then sent the docket back for more work. The matter eventually reached an inquest.
An inquest works differently from a criminal trial. The court’s job is to look at how a person died and if anyone can be held responsible for the death.
This is also a separate case from the one playing out in Durban. That is the murder trial over AKA’s own killing, after gunmen shot the rapper and his friend Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane in February 2023.
For fans who have followed both stories, the overlap is hard to ignore. AKA’s father is now challenging evidence about his son in Cape Town while a separate court in Durban works through the case over how that son was killed.
SABC News reported that at least seven witnesses were set to take the stand this week. More testimony is expected in the days ahead, and each new account could shift how the court reads that night at the Pepperclub.
