- Melinda compares Anele Tembe and AKA’s fated love story to that of Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorius.
- She says she contacted Lynn Forbes, anonymous sources close to AKA and Moses Tembe. She did not contact Tony Forbes.
- Melinda understood the implications of having a white person looking from the outside tell this story.
- She hopes to bring attention to the toxicity of obsessive relationships so that people can learn from it.
It’s been the talk of the month ever since it was announced that the tragic tale of Anele Tembe and Kiernan ‘AKA’ Forbes’ would be immortalised in Melinda Ferguson’s book When Love Kills: The Tragic Tale of AKA and Anele.
An award-winning journalist and author, Melinda is no stranger to putting to paper stories that have gripped the nation.
She has written The Kelly Khumalo Story and Oscar: An Accident Waiting to Happen – the latter of which she describes as a parallel to Anele and AKA’s fated love story in the 47th chapter of the book and in conversation with TRUELOVE.
“By all reports from people, both of the women were feisty, both of them had big mouths, both of them challenged their respective boyfriends and both of them are dead. Now, that's not bias.
“The fact of the matter is Anele died at the age of 22 and Reeva Steenkamp, I think she was 30 or something, and they both had boyfriends who had shown problematic behavior for a while in the public's sphere and the public – and I blame us, the public – we allowed all this behaviour to take place."
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The beginning
Melinda has just come off the back of intense backlash and felt “ambushed” by the public after the leak of the book cover on 11 April 2024, the third anniversary of Anele’s death.
It begs the question of when Melinda started planning for the book.
Anele’s passing had a major impact on Melinda and after the graphic videos of AKA breaking down a door to get to Anele, the video of AKA filming Anele curled up on the ground and the rapper’s subsequent murder in February 2023, she decided to compile the story.
She tells us, “I became one of those people like everyone else on social media who was watching. In my head, it was stewing. And then, of course, AKA then gets murdered in February last year. Again, it felt like another thing. So, I think all the while my head is moving, I'm reading, I'm speaking.
“And then I think I really wanted to do something sort of towards late last year. I'd been reading a lot of stuff and I suddenly thought, this is the biggest story that has happened in our country for a long time on a social level, as a GBV, as a tragedy, as a toxic masculinity story, as a hip-hop story and I just chucked myself in.”
Melinda initially wanted to leave her name off the book or place it in a micro font. This is because she knew the possible implications of having a white person telling this story.
“I had a feeling that I would be criticized on a level because I was white and I'm very conscious of white people and Black stories and cultural appropriation,” Melinda reveals.
“And so, I was mainly worried that I was white, and I was writing a story that was a Black story. But, as you know, I had been at TRUELOVE for 11 years in my career at a certain time and I felt like I knew – I'd done Bonang stories, I'd done the Bonang cover, a few covers. I did stories about Zinhle.
“We had done an AKA cover when he was very young, and he had just started hitting the scene. I knew the world that the story was taking place in as much as a white person can who isn't black. And I felt like, as a journalist … we were always writing about issue-based stories. So, it felt like, for me, that I believed that I had the ability, not the right, but the ability to write this.”
Contacting the families and hidden close sources
Of the people Melinda contacted for the comment, she admits that she received comment from anonymous sources close to AKA and from an interview she did with Anele’s father, Moses Tembe. She had also reached out to Lynn Forbes, AKA’s mother, but didn’t contact his father, Tony Forbes, who both ultimately distanced themselves from the book.
While Melinda is hesitant to speak on Lynn due to a current legal situation, she explains, “There was definitely a point where I was asking her permission, and she chose not to give it to me, and it wasn't like I didn't try. And with Moses, it was actually quite easy.
“I also don't really want to talk about Moses because their family spokesperson said they didn't speak to me, but you clearly see that I spoke to him. I think there's confusion around that statement. I think the fact that he didn't commission the book. Moses Tembe never said to me, ‘Melinda, write a book for Anele’, so that's definitely true. He never ever paid me. There was no agreement to write this book.”
In the book, Melinda touches on the cultural practice of lobola since Anele and AKA’s engagement. From speaking we wanted to find out the type of research of factual evidence that went into learning more about the late couple.
“Well, I mean, I spoke to Moses, there was a lot written. I looked at Kiernan’s – a lot of his Twitter. He put the post up about this Mont Blanc paper that he had bought and then there was this letter that he wrote to Moses. It was like I was trying to be this investigator trying to put pieces together.
“I also saw photographs of them, there was Anele putting her engagement ring up. I had to then say the parents, I knew that they were not happy that the two of them – I’m talking about from both sides – they were not happy. After everything that was going down, they knew what was happening between their children. The idea that these two were going to now get married was quite clearly something that both parents must have been pulling their hair out about.”
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What does she gain from releasing the book?
Much of the onslaught of scrutiny against Melinda came from many denouncing her for profiting off a tragedy of two young people of colour who were caught up in a whirlwind relationship.
As much as in the creation of goods and services, many hope to sell what they create, Melinda shares that they printed 4000 copies of the book and her impulse was to to shed light on the toxicity of and confusion between love and obsession, something she notes the pastor at Anele’s memorial service passionately dove into.
“I wanted to bring attention onto the kind of toxic stuff that happens between two people. Not just toxic masculinity, because it's bigger than that. It's about relationships that start in a way on an obsessive level and then they go really wrong. So, what I wanted, I guess, was for people to know that love can kill.
“My title, When Love Kills, I really believe that when love is skew and toxic and not healthy, it has the ability to kill the people who are involved with each other and it has with this relationship. Both of these two people I believe would be alive if they hadn't been together. I do. It feels like that the two of them were these ill-fated Romeo and Juliet who were just wrong for each other, but they couldn't stop. So, my biggest hope is that young women mainly and young men and older people and whatever read it and actually learn from it.”
