A petition calling for justice for slain South African rapper Kiernan 'AKA' Forbes has garnered close to 10 000 signatures.
Started by a woman named Lelo N, the petition is addressed to KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, national police commissioner General Fannie Masemola and Police Minister Bheki Cele, expresses the sentiments of many South Africans fed up with crime levels in the country.
AKA was gunned down outside the Wish restaurant in Florida Road last month. His former manager and long time friend, Tebello Tibz Motsoane, was also killed in the incident.
In the petition, Lelo recalls how a hitman walked into their home and fired several shots at her father.
"Unlike AKA, my father had to go through excruciating pain of knowing what was happening to him. Bleeding and perhaps losing air, he tried to flee to one of the other rooms in the house as the hitman followed him. He shot through the door of one of the rooms that my father had ran into when trying to call an unresponsive emergency number. The hitmen went in and shot, hitting him with another bullet in his hand as God knows how was trying to fight the hitman off.
“My father finally succumbed to weakness from blood loss. As he dropped to the ground, he was shot three more times. The next time I saw my father, he was in a hospital ER with blood dripping from his neck and bullets through his body," Lelo said.
She said despite her father surviving the shooting, he became a quadriplegic, and three years later, he died of renal failure.
"He died a very sad man who never knew justice. Despite suspects being provided to the police with motivating statements. All we were left with was the sad memory of his last three years, a young single mom of three young children and the case number of another South African cold case," Lelo said.
Lelo said justice needed to be served.
"How many more of our siblings, fathers, mothers need to die senselessly before perpetrators are brought to book. Is it your father, your uncle or maybe your brother or your son next? Will he be going to the local super market to buy a loaf of bread and then gunned down?" she said.
This week, Cele said he is constantly updated on the murder investigation.
"It’s a matter that we can’t let rest. Unfortunately, we can’t give you blow by blow updates of what is happening, but the progress is absolutely there.
"We have collected a lot of cellphones that we are working on, download everything, and try to patch things together. That’s the last I received on this matter.
"We acknowledge that it is not with the speed that the community and the nation would’ve loved to see, but watch the space, we are digging deep in this case," he said.
IOL