HONOURING NELLIE

They've opened a library in her name but Anele Tembe's family still have no answers about her sudden death

- NOKUTHULA ZWANE-EJIKE

SHE should be 25 years old now, carving a career as SA’s f irst female Michelin-star-chef-inthe-making, cooking up a storm in her restaurant with her whole life ahead of her.

Instead Anele Tembe will forever be known as the young woman who plunged to her death from the 10th floor of the Pepperclub Hotel on Loop Street in Cape Town where she was staying with her fiancé, late rapper Kiernan “AKA” Forbes.

Her tragic death in April 2021 rocked the country and left her loved ones utterly devastated. Now her family are hoping a state-of-the-art library named after her will honour how she lived.

At the recent unveiling of the Anele Tembe Library at her former school, Durban Girls’ College (DGC), her father, Moses Tembe, said the restoration of the school’s library was a fitting tribute because Nellie, as she was known, was a voracious reader. The library, which is also described as a sanctuary, a museum and a workshop, was designed by award-winning interior designer Andrea Kleinloog, who’s also a DGC alumnus.

It was sponsored by the Tembe family via a foundation named after Nellie and is one of several projects planned to commemorate her.

“This special legacy project will shine a light on Anele and radiate widely the very essence of her spirited personality. [She was a person] who lived, loved and shared her life with us so generously. The idea of creating a new library here at DGC fully embodies this intention,” Moses said at the unveiling ceremony. Stella Ngcobo, a former DGC teacher who taught Nellie IsiZulu before she matriculated from the top private school in 2017, described her as a disciplined and dedicated student. For her, the unveiling of the library was bittersweet.