There’s never a dull day in South Ahhh. If it’s not dramatic tell-all books, it’s operas about disgraced athletes and Coachella. Let’s jump into our entertainment round-up.
1. 👀 Famous journalist and author Melinda Ferguson has written a book about the late rapper AKA, real name Kiernan Forbes, and his late fiancee, Anele Tembe. The book, titled ‘When Love Kills: The Tragic Tale of AKA and Anele’, tells of the couple’s tumultuous relationship and Tembe’s 2021 death after she fell from the tenth story of the Pepper Club Hotel in Cape Town. AKA was gunned down two years later outside a restaurant on Durban’s famous Florida Road. Seven suspects have since been arrested for his murder.
People have speculated that his killing was linked to the Tembe Family, but the family denies this. Her father, businessman Moses Tembe, said he had no ill will towards AKA. “I kept on saying to my children, my parents and everyone who was affected by this. It’s important to treat Kiernan as our own child so we can actually be objective as this process starts. I object to anyone who suggests that Kiernan killed our daughter,” Tembe said.
AKA’s family, however, have slammed the book. In a joint statement released Monday afternoon, Tony and Lynn Forbes distanced themselves from the book. “We are not in any way associated with Melinda Ferguson’s book, and we do not endorse it,” they said. They revealed that they had declined to contribute to the book after Ferguson contacted them.
Ferguson said that she wrote the book to attempt to understand how two people fell into the spiral of a toxic relationship. “Something kept driving me to keep on in search of some kind of truth around what happened. And why they were now both dead….I have been through my own kind of hell in my life as an addict and as someone who has embarked on dangerous and obsessive relationships. Their story spoke to me. It literally broke my heart,” Ferguson said.
2. 🏃 Oscar Pistorius now has an opera about him. Well, about his murder trial. The one-hour opera, dubbed Trial by Media, is a musical take on the shocking murder of model Reeva Steenkamp by her boyfriend, the once-admired Pistorius, on Valentine’s Day 2013 and the subsequent trial. Composed by Conrad Asman, the opera features baritone Van Wyk Venter as Pistorius and soprano Brittany Smith as Steenkamp.
Asman, who is from Johannesburg but based in London, said he doesn’t want to alienate audiences with “It’s classical music, but there are flavourings of slow jazz and even Beyoncé — because I wanted to incorporate elements of what Reeva listened to,” he told The Mail and Guardian.
Initial reviews have called it “exhilarating, so fascinating and so thought-provoking”.
3. Finally, is Doja Cat going back to her roots? The artist, Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, brought out the South African Acapella group The Joy to perform with her as she headlined Coachella, a famous annual music festival in California. The group performed a verse in isiZulu. Doja Cat’s father is actor Dumisani Dlamini. Doja Cat and The Joy performed her songs Acknowledge Me and Shutcho.
