AKA ordered to retract statement about owning part of The Braai Show

The drama between AKA and production company Cake Media is far from over, as neither party is backing down.

Cake Media released a letter of demand ordering the rapper to retract statements about him owning 50% of the SABC1 show coming up for its second program next month.

The disagreement between the two parties started last week when Cake Media announced Cassper Nyovest as the new host of The Braai Show Season 2.

Soon after the announcement, AKA released a statement saying he owned 50% of the show and wanted the production of the show to cease due to contractual issues.

However, on Saturday, 14 August, Cake Media released a statement that read: “Executive producers of the television show, The Braai Show with Cassper Nyovest are demanding AKA (Kiernan Forbes) to retract all comments, accusations and allegations made on all of his social media platforms regarding the showand his purported ownership by 1 pm on Monday, 16 August. He must also apologise for the damage he has caused as a consequence of his actions.”

They said his claim that he owned 50% of the show was incorrect.

“Essentially, the action points out that Kiernan Forbes has no copyright claims as show was conceived wholly by MakhuduCom; Forbes’ primary agreement with MakhuduCom applied to the AKA TV app and came post the creation of the show, and his claim to own 50% copyright is incorrect and malicious, among other matters.

“The letter points out that Kiernan Forbes has no claims to any copyright over the show. It asserts the show was conceptualised by MakhuduCom and that production company Bar Leader was approached to facilitate production of the concept into a television show.”

Cake Media said MakhuduCom came up with the concept of the show.

“It is clear from the various agreements that The Braai Show, as a concept, was conceptualised by MakhuduCom and that all ownership rights that vested into the concept were owned by it.

“It was pursuant to MakhuduCom’s ownership of the concept that it approached Bar Leader for the purposes of facilitating the production of the concept into a fully-fledged TV show. In this regard, Bar Leader and MakhuduCom concluded a production services agreement dated 12 March 2020.”

They also said AKA misunderstood the arrangement he got into. “It is clear from a consideration of your letters that your client has relied on a flawed and legally impermissible interpretation of the various agreements concluded by the various parties. In particular, it seems to us that your client has misunderstood the various rights and obligations which flow from the partnership agreement,” they said.

AKA’s management team said they received the letter on Friday and their legal team was dealing with it.

“The letter was received early Friday evening, and will be dealt with by our legal team. We are not at liberty to discuss our legal position so as not to compromise our case at this stage.

“We will however note that at no point was our client appropriately engaged, as stipulated in the contract and all these changes took place at a time that he is grieving and had engaged the public and all his business partners/affiliations that he was temporarily taking a step back. No further comment can be made.”