PRETORIA – Former South African Minister of Police Bheki Cele has raised doubts on the circumstances surrounding the death of the late rapper AKA’s fiancé, Anele Tembe, as he revealed that police believe that she was murdered.
At just 22 years old, Tembe fell to her death in April 2021 from the 10th floor of the Pepperclub Hotel in Cape Town. She was with AKA at the time, with the two said to have had a heated dispute prior to the incident.
The National Prosecuting Authority initially ruled Tembe’s death a suicide in 2022. Her family disputed these findings while an inquest into her death has faced repeated delays. It was initially scheduled to begin in April 2024 but has been postponed multiple times.
Speaking on Thursday at Parliament’s ad hoc committee probing alleged police corruption, Cele said that he had told South African president Cyril Ramaphosa that foul play was afoot in the Tembe case before it had even happened.
“I went to the president, personally. I said: ‘Mr President, your minister of police is going to do something funny. He’s going to support the private prosecution,” Cele testified.
The former minister expressed frustration about prosecutorial delays relating to the case, as prosecutors played hide and seek with authorities.
“The prosecutor refused to give a certificate. So you can’t prosecute, you can’t give a certificate. So you’re stuck in the middle,” he said.
Cele told lawmakers that a magistrate conducting an inquest is now questioning why the case was not enrolled as a criminal matter.
“But now I know that in that inquest, the magistrate who is there now is asking the question, why this thing was not enrolled? Because it’s an obvious case,” Cele said.
“You should ask the prosecutor who did not enroll it in the Western Cape,” he added.
AKA was subsequently shot and killed in Durban in February 2023 in what police described as an assassination. Seven suspects have been arrested in connection with his murder.
Moses Tembe, a business mogul and the late Anele’s father, has repeatedly denied allegations linking him to Forbes’ killing, calling such claims “untrue and without substance” in a statement last year.
