At 30 South Africa is in a dark place, none that any would have anticipated in April 1994.
While April 1993 had cast a dark spell over the country, Madiba stepped up to be a de-facto president and reassured the nation that while peace does not suggest the absence of violence, peace at all material times is the trophy.
Today that dark spot of a suicide or assassin has revisited us. But will the leadership rise in this context and South Africa be granted respite to rise?
When the news of Nathi Mthethwa’s death broke, I was not reminded of the story of the 22-metre flag but rather one of a citizen-politician conversation that aimed at yielding important results. One of significant national memorialisation through the Madiba prison key and the other a cultural platform for young Zwide Ndwandwe who started a national movement of the Madiba Jive for Peace.
The brutal and untimely death, whether self-inflicted through suicide or through a planned assassination, of ambassador Mthethwa and his funeral have seized the national psyche and for years to come might mark a turning point for the nation. His funeral could invoke the ‘Beware the Ides of March and Mark Antony’.
The deep irony of this scenario, however, is that ‘Mark Antony’ is the man in uniform who triggered the investigation and the Madlanga Commission and has identified Mthethwa as one of the alleged wrongdoers.
Not only has he stuck to the truth, he at this moment of mourning raised the question of the perimeter wall that was erected around the late minister’s house. If this deep provocation and care coming from the man in uniform does not cement the need for a different civil service for a different South African society, then what will? Hitherto far from known. He has stuck to the truth throughout.
While a suicide would seal the fate of Mthethwa, an assassination may reconcile this tragic moment of truth into a Julius Caesar-Mark Antony moment for South Africa where Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi would have allowed Mthethwa to tell the truth and uncover and uproot whatever nefarious and deep elements of destruction and their global tentacles lie in the system.
It is this tribute that the man in uniform would possibly give to comfort the Mthethwa family and the nation about his passing. A medal of honour that says when the country was on its sharp edge, those implicated had the guts to realise that loving the country more and fearing the consequences they created less was called for. An ironic trigger for a Caesar-Mark Antony moment of Mthethwa-Mkhwanazi.
The narrative that Mthethwa committed suicide is increasingly becoming suspect and, if uncovered to be untrue, Mthethwa and Mkhwanazi would mark an ironic representation of the Caesar-Mark Antony duet, but one whose prospects could increasingly become possible posthumously and be the healing moment for a nation burdened with incredible consequences of malfeasance.
Here is a story of the Mthethwa I experienced on two separate occasions four years after I left office. On December 17 2021 I wrote to the minister of arts and culture raising a matter of Madiba Jive for Peace and I wrote a WhatsApp message: “Minister, I trust you are well. I have been in discussions with Zwide Ndwandwe of Madiba Jive last night. The programme is on skids because of financing and Zwide’s own meagre financial resources have long been depleted. What remains in him is the will and drive that characterised and centred his vision on Madiba Jive.
“There is need minister for an urgent intervention. All the potential promises made are turning into thin air. I plead that his ambition be supported materially with financial resources.”
Eleven days later on November 28 2021 I again wrote: “I wish to express my deep appreciation of your incredibly positive intervention on Zwide’s farsighted invention and contribution to getting South Africa, especially on the path to peace and prosperity through memory. Having chosen Madiba as a vehicle for memory in struggle, South Africa can reinvent the struggle concerts as a global brand. This intervention whilst in our immediacy here at home, it is global and the memory of Madiba is the shoulder upon which South Africa can project its renewal agenda. Zwide chose the right theatre and your support is indeed important in powering the vision of the young man.
December 2021 became a busy month of conversation between Mthethwa and I. This came about because on December 23 2021, the Independent published an article that read: “[The] key that kept former South African president Nelson Mandela locked behind bars for almost 20 years is set to fetch more than a million pounds at auction next month. The key comes from the prison on Robben island near Cape Town where the anti-apartheid campaigner was incarcerated by the white authorities.”
On December 23 2021, I wrote to Mthethwa: “Minister, evening — this has to be interdicted urgently and the key has to be immediately confiscated from whomsoever and handed over to the state; it is for the state.”
He was abroad, and on December 24 2021, Nathi Mthethwa wrote: “Thanks, my brother. I’ve just seen it and asked my DG to take action immediately.”
[December 24 2021] Me: “Thanx Minister. The sale of the key and identity documents and other heritage artefacts was stopped.”
It is this side of Mthethwa that I know. It is this side that increasingly makes the suicide narrative weaker and elevates the assassination as the cause of Mthethwa’s demise. It is the speculated content of the cause-of-assassination hypothesis that poises itself to be a rather ironic Caesar-Mark Antony thesis in the Mthethwa-Mkhwanazi moment.
Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa
For opinion and analysis consideration, email opinions@timeslive.co.za
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