The identity question hanging over the airport footage in AKA’s murder trial now has a witness willing to answer it.
A police officer who collects CCTV evidence told the Durban High Court that the man seen trailing the rapper at King Shaka International Airport was Mziwethemba Gwabeni, one of the seven accused.
According to an October 22 report from SABC News, the officer said he knew Gwabeni from past encounters in police cells, from other footage and from news reports.
He told the court he was convinced Gwabeni was the man walking behind AKA and his group inside the airport.
His testimony also shed light on how police landed on that conclusion in the first place. The case’s investigating officer first pointed out a person in the video, and the CCTV officer then studied it more closely and agreed. “We then came to the conclusion that it was the same person,” he told the court.
That account fills a gap the defense had been leaning on. When the state played the airport footage on October 19, it did not ask the airport’s own analyst to identify the man seen near AKA.
Gwabeni’s lawyer, William Nicholson, seized on that. He argued that the person in the video simply could not be identified, and that the analyst lacked the ability to make that call anyway.
The footage itself shows AKA stopping at a car rental counter while a man stands near the entrance. That man then appears to follow the rapper toward the parking lot, which is exactly why his identity has become the central fight over the airport evidence.
The analyst also flagged a technical limit that could matter as the trial goes on. The airport’s system could not export footage to other devices, although it could produce still images, which he handed to the state.
None of this is entirely new territory for Gwabeni. Police had already alleged at a bail hearing that he followed AKA, but this is the first time a trial witness has laid out a stated basis for that identification in court.
The defense will likely keep pressing on how reliable recognition can be when it rests partly on prior police contact and media coverage. For the prosecution, the officer’s account gives the airport footage a name it previously lacked.
AKA, born Kiernan Forbes, was one of South Africa’s biggest rap stars before he and his friend Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane were shot dead in Durban on February 10, 2023.
The killings shook the country’s music scene and left fans demanding answers for months before arrests were made.
The seven accused face charges including murder, conspiracy, attempted murder and firearm offences. All of them have pleaded not guilty and deny the charges.
The state still has to prove its case against each man individually, and no verdict has been reached. With the airport evidence now contested from both sides, the next witnesses could decide how much weight that grainy footage ends up carrying.
