South African rapper, AKA murdered in Durban
Key takeaways:
- Parents of Kiernan Forbes pay homage to ‘beloved son who was murdered with another man while walking to the car.
One of South African leading rapper, well known as AKA, has been murdered outside a restaurant in the eastern metropolis of Durban, his family said.
South African rapper AKA shot dead:
Kiernan Forbes, 35, won numerous South African awards, was nominated sometimes for a Black Entertainment Television honour in the US and was once nominated for an MTV Europe music prize.
“It is with extreme sorrow that we accept the demise of our dear son,” his parents, Tony and Lynn Forbes, stated in a statement on AKA’s Twitter handle. “Our son was adored, and he gave love in return.”
He was fired on Friday evening with another man while they were walking towards their vehicle from a hotel.
Police said: “They were allegedly followed by two armed suspects who walked to them across the road and shot the victims at close range.”
Forbes was booked to act at a club on Friday evening, according to the Durban city mayor, Mxolisi Kaunda.
Also read: Chinese protest against cuts in medical benefits
Police said the reason for the shooting was strange, and an inquiry was underway. Beauty Dlulane, who chairs a parliamentary panel on arts and culture, criticised AKA’s murder, describing it as a “hit”.
She called on authorities “to save South Africans from this new plague of what appears to be contract and revenge murders where performing artists and DJs seem to be targeted”.
Last November, a celebrity of the house music subgenre am a piano, Oupa Sefoka – well known as DJ Sumbody – was murdered with his bodyguard in a drive-by shooting in Johannesburg.
In 2007, gun brutality in South Africa claimed the life of one of Africa’s most precious international artists. The reggae rapper Lucky Dube was dropping off his teenage kid at a relative’s house when shooters shot him three times at close range during a tried hijacking.
