Tony Forbes, the father of multi-platinum-selling rapper, AKA, made interesting remarks following the first court appearance of five of the seven suspects arrested for his son’s murder.
Tony Forbes remarks about the true mastermind behind AKA murder
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Forbes was at the gallery when the five suspects, initially masked in scarves and hoodies, lined up on the dock inside the Durban Magistrate’s Court, on Thursday.
What was supposed to be a brief court appearance to formally register each of the accused’s charge sheets turned into a prolonged tug of war between state prosecutors and the defence over the suspects’ hidden faces.
Despite the defence’s assertions that the suspects’ faces were covered due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation, the court ordered the suspects to remove the masking objects and for the first time, the public laid eyes on the five men believed to be part of a greater conspiracy to murder AKA.
Forbes, speaking to the media after the court session, shared that the provincial commissioner, Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, may have been misunderstood when he alluded to the fact that one of the suspects in custody was the ‘true mastermind’ behind the assassination.
“I think he was referring to the coordinator. The coordinator, if I understand things correctly, received a sum of money and shared it with six other people. Where did that money come from?” AKA’s father asked.
Already, Lt-Gen Mkhwanazi revealed at a media briefing earlier this week that the investigation into AKA and Tebello ‘Tibz’ Motsoane had yielded a large collection of incriminating evidence, dating as far back as April 2023, when the first suspect was arrested in Cape Town for an unrelated matter.
KZN’s top cop confirmed that a financial paper trail linking several suspects to AKA’s murder plot was crucial in the arrest of the seven suspects. However, Lt-Gen Mkhwanazi was careful to not explicitly make mention of any developments concerning a ‘bigger fish’ in the murder plot.
“Is this the true mastermind? My gut feeling says no, but I haven’t done the investigation, I’m speculating,” Tony Forbes told reporters.
Who wanted AKA dead?
AKA and Tibz were viciously gunned down outside Wish Restaurant on Florida Road, on the evening of Friday, 10 February 2023. The rapper, against repeated warnings to stay away from the province, was in Durban to perform at a popular nightclub weeks before the release of his fifth studio album, Mass Country.
Lyrics from the posthumous album, particularly Diary and Army, in hindsight, suggest AKA was well aware of the dangers that lurked in his proximity, especially in Durban, where his deceased fiancée, Anele Tembe, was from.
The grapevine has been reverberating with speculation that, perhaps, Tembe’s father, Moses, a crude businessman with deep ties to the KZN taxi industry, sought blood after his daughter’s death in April 2021, the inquest of which remains open.
Despite numerous allegations pointing to Moses as the ‘true mastermind’ behind the AKA murder plot, police have, up to this point, not surfaced with evidence linking the rapper’s assassination to the businessman.
The five suspects charged with the murders will return to court on Wednesday, 6 March 2024, for bail verification. Two more suspects are expected to join the accused’s bench as soon as the extradition process with Eswatini has been finalised.