Melinda Ferguson, who is the author of When Love Kills – the book documenting the tragic tale of hip-hop star Kiernan “AKA” Forbes and his fiancée Anele Tembe – has opened up about her addiction to drugs.
AUTHOR OF AKA AND ANELE BOOK ON DOING DRUGS IN HILLBROW
The journalist, who has also written books about singer Kelly Khumalo and convicted former Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, told Sol Phenduka on Podcast and Chill that she could relate to Anele’s story.
“I was a very promising student… and then I met heroin and crack… crack cocaine and heroin. And when I was 23 I starting using,” Ferguson told the podcaster and Kaya FM breakfast co-host.
In 1999, Ferguson said she lived in delipidated Hillbrow, in Johannesburg.
“I get gangraped. I’m standing wh*ring for crack. I am 46 kilograms, I’m ready to die… a miricle happens and I get rescued by my brother. I landed up in a homeless farm in the Magaliesburg. I was homeless. I was proper homeless,” she explained.
After some time on the farm, Ferguson said she got clean and worked as a waitress. While working, she met the deputy editor of one the biggest magazines in the country, gave her a story she had written and was later offered a job.
‘I WAS A CRACK WH*RE’
Further opening up about her addiction, the author said she knows and understands the beast of addiction – which she believes was also a part of the lovestory of AKA and Anele.
Although clean from alcohol and drugs for 24 years, the writer said she still smokes.
“I have been clean for 24 years… I know the signs,” she explained. “In the end, I had to sell my body for my hit. I was a crack wh*re. I slept with my dealers.”
“Even at the farm I did not want to stop,” she added. “I wanted to jump off Ponte (a 173 metre tall building in Hillbrow). I wanted to kill myself.”
Ferguson said she could relate to Anele’s story.
“It brought up a lot for me. A girl falling from a building is something I wanted to do.”
DRUG USE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST AKA AND ANELE
Anele, who was 22 years old, fell to her death from the 10th floor of the Pepperclub Hotel on Loop Street in Cape Town on 11 April 2021.
Less than two years later, AKA was gunned down in Durban on 10 February 2023 with his friend and celebrity chef Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane.
A 2021 article by Sunday World reported that “accusations of drugs and physical abuse characterised the relationship” between AKA and Anele.
A highly-publicised incident is of an allegedly abusive episode in AKA and Anele’s relationship, showing pictures of the rapper behind a broken door. More pictures of the incident, shared by Sunday World at the time, show the musician now inside the same room with a terrified Anele.
According to the publication, the pictures were from a video wherein the Fela in Versace hitmaker had broken down the door while Anele could be heard pleading with him to calm down. However, in the clip, AKA was reportedly heard hurling expletives at his partner.
In another video on a separate occasion, Anele could been seen hurling objects at AKA and vandalising furniture and AKA’s awards, including his SA Music Awards — according to the publication. In the video AKA could be heard saying Anele is under the “influence” of drugs.