First officer at the scene recounts AKA’s words after Anele Tembe’s fatal fall

These were among the first words rapper Kiernan “AKA” Forbes allegedly said to a police officer who arrived at the Pepperclub Hotel in Cape Town, where Anele Tembe fell from a 10th-floor balcony in April 2021. Forbes was murdered in Durban in February 2023.

More than five years after the 22-year-old’s death, the Cape Town magistrate’s court on Monday began a formal inquest aimed at establishing the circumstances surrounding her fatal fall.

A police officer who was one of the first to arrive at the scene began testimony on Monday morning. The witness cannot be named as per a court order.

Witness A told the court he and his partner were dispatched to the hotel after receiving a call reporting an apparent suicide.

When they arrived, Tembe was lying naked on the side of the road outside the hotel.

Hotel security told him she had fallen from the 10th floor. He went upstairs with a security guard while his partner remained outside.

Instead of being taken directly to room 104, where Tembe and Forbes had been staying, he was initially taken to room 105, where he encountered Forbes and some of his friends.

Forbes told him he and Tembe had argued that morning. He had gone into the bathroom, and when he came out, Tembe was not in the hotel room.

“He went to look on the balcony and saw her on the side of the road.”

“Everything was upside down. There were cans of drinks, and the linen was on the floor. At the time it was just the two of us who went in. I went to the balcony to look where she had fallen,” the officer testified.

Forbes immediately gave police a statement, saying he wanted to recount what had happened while it was fresh in his mind.

In it, Forbes said he and Tembe had been arguing in their hotel room when she threatened to jump from the building.

Forbes said he called hotel security to alert them that Tembe wanted to jump and that she was on the balcony and holding onto the balcony rail.

“I thought she was kidding because she had done it before in Durban,” the statement read.

Forbes said the incident in Durban had involved police negotiators and other role players, and Tembe had not jumped.

He said he went into the bathroom because he did not believe she would go through with the threat.

“After I came out of the bathroom, she was not in the room. I went to the balcony and saw her lying in the street. She jumped from the 10th floor,” Forbes said in the statement.

During questioning by an attorney representing Tembe’s family, the officer was asked whether Forbes had enquired about Tembe’s condition or wellbeing after the fall.

The court also heard Forbes had contacted hotel security rather than emergency medical personnel.

The officer was questioned about injuries allegedly observed on Forbes’s arms and other parts of his body. He told the court he did not discuss the injuries with Forbes at the time.