1988-2023 FAREWELL SUPA MEGA

Rapper Kiernan AKA Forbes' shooting in Durban has left hip-hop fans devastated and his loved ones heartbroken.

- KESHIA AFRICA & SIPHOKAZI ZAMA

Flowers were placed on the ground outside Wish on Florida Road where the rapper was gunned down.

AT FIRST people thought it was a hoax – something cooked up in the craziness of the internet, a wild rumour someone had run with and others had simply latched onto.

It couldn’t be true. AKA brazenly gunned down on a busy street? It sounded too far-fetched, too Biggie and Tupac, too much like something that would happen in America or the movies.

But it was true. It had happened. And even South Africans numbed by a never-ending stream of crime, violence and murder were horrified.

CCTV footage of the shootings, which claimed the life of the rapper and his friend, celebrity chef Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane, showed the incident in shocking detail.

On the night of his death, Kiernan AKA' Forbes was supposed to perform at YüGö nightclub.

AKA died instantly, bleeding from his head on the pavement outside the restaurant on Durban’s trendy Florida Road strip where he’d eaten his last meal. Tibz succumbed to his injuries as paramedics tried to save his life.

Days later those who knew AKA, whose real name was Kiernan Forbes, are still trying to come to terms with what happened. Farah Fortune, his friend and former publicist, can barely get a sentence out without breaking down and crying.

“I’m still in so much shock,” she tells YOU. “I don’t understand any of it. I’m trying to process it all. I have little bits of sleep and every time I wake up, I remember that it’s real.”