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Former Cabinet member Malusi Gigaba and a delegation of former ANC Youth League members visited late ambassador Nathi Mthethwa’s home in KwaMbonambi near Richards Bay on Tuesday.
- Former ANC Youth League leaders, who revived the league in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1990s, visited Nathi Mthethwa’s home near Richards Bay on Tuesday.
- South Africa’s ambassador to France died under mysterious circumstances, with speculation rife that it was either suicide or that he was killed.
- Mthethwa’s friend, Malusi Gigaba, has cautioned against the “disinformation mill”.
Former finance minister Malusi Gigaba says the late ambassador Nathi Mthethwa’s family and friends “will, for now, believe what we’ve been told” about the circumstances surrounding the politician’s death.
It’s alleged that Mthethwa died by suicide after jumping from a Paris Hotel, but police are still investigating.
Gigaba and a delegation of former ANC Youth League members, who revitalised the youth league structures alongside Mthethwa in KwaZulu-Natal in the 1990s, visited the late ambassador’s home in KwaMbonambi near Richards Bay on Tuesday.
“We don’t want to get into speculation about what happened. We will, for now, believe what we’ve been told,” said Gigaba.
“We know who comrade Nathi was, but in the absence of information, we have to go with what we have been told.
We know the rumour [and] disinformation mill is working very hard to create confusion about the situation in which we find ourselves.
“But our focus now is to lay Nathi to rest and comfort the family and ensure they have as much support as possible.”
It’s still unclear when Mthethwa’s remains will be brought back to the country, with reports suggesting it could be on Friday and his burial on Sunday.
Mthethwa had a chequered public profile during his time as police minister and as sports, arts and culture minister.
During his time at the helm of the police ministry, Mthethwa was a central figure in the Nkandlagate scandal, which sparked public outrage over the expenditure of more than R200 million on former president Jacob Zuma’s personal residence in KwaZulu-Natal.
READ | ‘A void beyond words’: Nathi Mthethwa’s family awaits clarity on his death in Paris
He was also the police minister during the Marikana massacre, where several miners were killed by the police in a gruesome confrontation.
Mthethwa also insisted on the installation of a R22 million South African flag – again amid public outrage – until President Cyril Ramaphosa canned the idea.
“You know [there are] whole stories to tell about him, but there are also light stories to tell you about who he was; what a sense of humour he had; what a jocular person he was.
“Therefore, we need to tell his full story over the coming days and everybody who knows their little story about him, who had personal anecdotes about him, should come forward to tell those stories so that we remember it.”
Gigaba added that, in the end, Mthethwa was a political leader and “his legacy will be a subject of intense scrutiny and debate”.
He said:
It will be a subject of history. How should history remember him? You must remember him as a revolutionary intellectual.
Gigaba said that Mthethwa must be remembered as someone who dedicated his whole life to the cause of our people.
“And you must remember that as a human being, he himself had his faults.
“In the course of that, he was not an armchair revolutionary because only armchair revolutionaries don’t commit mistakes like someone who was involved in the day-to-day [running of] the movement or in government.
He added:
Indeed, he committed these things, but those mistakes, you must write them on water and write all his heroics and have them on stone so that they are never forgotten.
“Using life experience, like all of us do, to be a lesson on how people should conduct themselves in the struggle, so that we are able to be better, to inform those who come after us.”
He said there are “heroic and light stories” that must be told about Mthethwa over the next couple of days.
He said history has no blank pages, and Mthethwa’s story will fill a few of those, including about his role in the ANC’s struggle against apartheid.
READ | YouTube video spins fiction around Nathi Mthethwa’s death as conspiracies fill the vacuum
Gigaba recalled an incident during apartheid, where Mthethwa travelled all the way to Mpumalanga to support MK members who had been arrested.
“The funny thing is that when they themselves got arrested in the course of coming to support those who were arrested because they were trying to assist in ending political violence in KZN, he gave the police a wrong name.
“So when they were called in the morning to be released, they spent a long time because [Mthethwa] had forgotten what false name he had given the police... until comrades had to remind him that, ‘Hey, comrade Nathi, you had said that you are so and so and that’s the person who has been called.’
“And they couldn’t also get their vehicle released because it had been registered under that false name.”
Gigaba heaped praise on Mthethwa as a champion of the poor, rural people, young people, and women.
He said the ANC has to remember him as a “rebuilder” of the party and a servant leader.
Gigaba added:
We are deeply, deeply hurt by what has happened. And we never imagined we would speak of comrade Nathi in the past tense.
Gigaba said it was important for the former ANC Youth League leaders not to mourn Mthethwa from a distance but to visit his home.
