Rapper Khuli says it's not 'glamorous' to be shot at in SA

19 June 2016 - 02:00 By GABI MBELE

Rapper Khuli Chana still has nightmares about being shot by police at a service station in Midrand, Gauteng: "A loud bang still freaks me out." This week - three weeks after receiving an undisclosed amount from the police after he brought a civil claim - Chana is due to release a documentary about his ordeal.He hopes Picking Up the Pieces: The Khuli Chana Story, will put an end to the questions he is bombarded with about the 2013 incident.story_article_left1"I like to vibe with people at my shows, but after the incident I couldn't. People were always asking me how the case was going. It would bring everything back for me."Chana (real name Khulane Morale) was shot when police officers reportedly mistook him for a kidnapper at the New Road off-ramp petrol station in October 2013. One bullet lodged in his right finger. Another bullet broke into shrapnel that penetrated his back."American rappers always glamorise being shot. Maybe in the US it's cool to be shot, but it's honestly not and I want people to see that."I have accepted that the nightmares are going to be there. You learn to live with it. My routine has changed a lot. I started putting myself out there a little more to just overcome it."In the 80-minute documentary, to showcase at a Ster-Kinekor cinema on Wednesday, Chana takes fans back to the peak of his career and deals with fatherhood and the "graphic details of what happened that night".Before the shooting, his album Lost in Time had put him at the pinnacle of the hip-hop industry. In May 2013, he won three South African Music Awards.story_article_right2But the shooting changed things."I went through a few months of therapy but dropped out. I wasn't dealing with it so I got back on stage and never went back to therapy. And suddenly it wasn't as fun as [before]."I intend going back to therapy because I realise I'm not completely healed."Chana said he realised "there were clues" to what was to come. Earlier that afternoon he had a flat tyre, resulting in a near accident. "I freaked out. I had just taken out a life policy and the financial adviser talking about 'one moment you're in the car then just like that you are gone '."Later that night Chana left his girlfriend, Asanda Maku, and his then three-month-old daughter, Nia, at home and headed to an event at Moloko club in Pretoria."The scariest thing was not being shot at, but coming out of it alive. When you survive by inches - nine bullets to the car, a grazed nose, injuries - you think what are you supposed to do after that. Are you like Superman now? It makes you understand there is a higher being. That's what I want people to see."..

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