Amid the costly ANC-style state funeral for its fallen loyalist and deployed diplomat, Nathi Mthethwa, held at his homestead in KwaMbonambi on KwaZulu-Natal’s lush green north coast, the moment calls for reflection.
His headline-making death in Paris — the city of liberty, lights and love — should remind the nation that two ANC ambassadors have now died in the French capital in four decades, lest we forget the 1988 assassination of Dulcie September, the ANC’s chief representative in France.
The envoy was given a right royal farewell — ANC personalities and mourners dressed in black, with dark sunglasses, dignified until journey’s end for one of the most controversial politicians of the time, whose activism began humbly as one of five ANC Youth League members in KZN 30 years ago.
His death, suspected to be suicide, raised painful questions. Why are our liberation-era leaders — those who fought for justice and dignity — dying in such tragic solitude? The parallels are haunting.
All roads led to the state funeral on the northern flank near the heartland of Zululand last Sunday. Grieving family members, the community and the ANC remain suspicious about the bizarre death. Family members, including the late ambassador’s son, performed a traditional “fetching of the spirit” ritual at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Paris, where Mthethwa’s body was found last week.
According to French prosecutors, the 58-year-old former cabinet minister and South Africa’s ambassador to France died after falling from the 22nd floor of the hotel. Police investigations have reportedly found no evidence of foul play.
As the envoy’s body was airborne to bring it back to South Africa, controversial former police minister Bheki Cele had cast doubt on the casket. He cautioned against premature conclusions at a memorial service in Pinetown, near the envoy’s political stamping ground of Clermont.
Cele, describing himself as having “expertise”, questioned the speed and certainty of the French investigation: “You cannot just conclude that someone willingly jumped from a building only 12 hours after their death — it doesn’t make sense. What kind of investigators are those? Are they sangomas? They claim a phone was found elsewhere and that he sent a message before 11. Are we supposed to believe no one saw him jump?”
Cele’s remarks reflect growing unease within political and diplomatic circles as both South African and French authorities continue to piece together the final moments of a man who served at the heart of government and diplomacy.
French prosecutors confirmed that the 58-year-old former police minister had a fall from the 22nd floor, detecting “no signs of foul play”.
Back to my backstory: Paris has always held a special place in my journalistic journey. In the 1980s, it was my second stopover during my inaugural media mission abroad, after Britain, Europe later, and newly-independent Zimbabwe.
While working for the Sunday Tribune and the Argus Group, I was assigned to cover the UN’s inaugural global conference to end apartheid-era Springbok sports tours — an event spearheaded in London by my self-exiled physical education teacher, Sam Ramsamy.
As the first journalist of colour in the Argus Foreign Bureau on Fleet Street, I filed dispatches and photographs that were published across multiple titles, marking a milestone in both media representation and international solidarity against apartheid.
Five years later, I returned with my family, fresh from a sabbatical at City University of London, carrying an international journalism qualification denied to me by the apartheid regime and Rhodes University.
Last week, as Spring dawned, the 5am news bulletin stopped me mid-step en route to my first cup of piping hot coffee. The headline was devastating: South Africa’s ambassador to France, Nathi Mthethwa, had died under tragic and mysterious circumstances in Paris.
Only days earlier, he had presented his credentials to the principality of Monaco, home to Princess Charlene, South Africa’s Olympic swimming champion. Now, he was gone — his body found in the courtyard of the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile, reportedly, he plunged to his death.
The shock reverberated across South Africa. Mthethwa, a former minister of police, and of sports and arts and culture, was a prominent figure in the ANC and a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle.
His death, suspected to be suicide, raised painful questions: Why are our liberation-era leaders — those who fought for justice and dignity — dying in such tragic solitude?
The parallels are haunting: During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, ANC minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson was found dead at her Rondebosch home in June 2023. Her passing followed allegations of extortion involving a R600 000 bribe linked to the Section 194 Inquiry into suspended Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane. In her final interview, Joemat-Pettersson reportedly said, “I have no life and no future,” a chilling expression of emotional distress. Her death remains under investigation, but the shadow of suicide looms large.
Turn back the clock to 1988, when in London I received the heartbreaking news of Dulcie September’s assassination in Paris. She was gunned down while serving as the ANC’s chief representative in France. Now, decades later, another ANC stalwart has died in the same city — this time not by an assassin’s bullet, but by a fall that has left more questions than answers.
The French police are renowned for their methodical approach to investigating deaths, murders and assassinations. Their clinical precision was evident in the handling of Princess Diana’s fatal crash in 1997. Now, they are tasked with piecing together the final moments of a South African diplomat whose life spanned from the trenches of struggle to the corridors of power.
Mthethwa’s journey began in Clermont and Klaarwater, outside Durban. His rise through the ANC ranks culminated in ministerial appointments under presidents Kgalema Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma, and Cyril Ramaphosa. His KwaBonambi homestead, once a symbol of political stature, became a gathering place for mourners — family, comrades and community members united in grief and disbelief.
The news of his death travelled swiftly. French newspaper Le Parisien was among the first to report the incident, noting that Mthethwa had been reported missing by his wife after she received a distressing message. His body was later found at the foot of the Hyatt Regency in the Porte Maillot district. International outlets, including Reuters France, Sky News, Daily Star, and The Mirror UK echoed the report, citing French police sources. Back home, the Mail & Guardian, IOL, and EWN added tributes and political context.
But beneath the shock lies a deeper reckoning.
The Wall, the Mercedes-Benz, and the Whispered Orders: Nathi Mthethwa and the Architecture of State Capture: Once hailed as a loyal foot soldier of the ANC, Mthethwa now stands as a spectral figure in South Africa’s long and painful confrontation with State Capture. His sudden death in Paris, far from the dusty corridors of power he once patrolled, casts a pall over the unfolding Madlanga Commission inquiry — and raises uncomfortable questions about accountability, memory and the cost of silence.
Mthethwa’s name surfaced repeatedly in the Zondo Commission, tethered to allegations of personal enrichment via Crime Intelligence slush funds. A luxury Mercedes-Benz and a R200 000 wall built around his KwaZulu-Natal home became symbols not just of excess, but of a deeper rot: the repurposing of state resources for private comfort and political shielding.
But it is the testimony emerging from the Madlanga Commission that cuts closer to the bone. KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s account of political interference — of being summoned by Mthethwa and instructed to halt the prosecution of then SAPS crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli — is not merely a footnote in bureaucratic dysfunction. It is a chilling reminder of how intelligence structures were weaponised to protect allies and suppress dissent.
Mkhwanazi’s words, “The worst political interference I have ever experienced,”— echo like a warning shot across the bow of democratic accountability. They speak to a culture where loyalty trumped legality and where ministers blurred the line between governance and patronage.
The tragedy, of course, is not just institutional. It is human. The whistleblowers who risked careers and reputations to speak truth to power. The citizens whose safety was compromised by a politicised police force. The journalists who chased leads through a fog of obfuscation. And now, SAPS investigators, commissioned by acting Police Minister, Feroz Cachalia, must still piece together a puzzle whose central figure has exited the stage.
His death may close one chapter, but it must not seal the archive. The Madlanga Commission has a duty not only to expose, but to illuminate — to show how the architecture of State Capture was built brick by brick, wall by wall, whisper by whisper.
South Africa deserves more than catharsis. It deserves a consequence.
Marlan Padayachee, member of the SA National Editors’ Forum, is a veteran political, foreign and diplomatic correspondent from South Africa’s transition to democracy and a recipient of awards, including from the British Council and the USIS International Visitor and newly appointed co-chair: Media Council of Gopio International, representing 35 million in the 35-nation Indian diaspora. He is a freelance journalist.
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