SIPHIWO MAHALA | Nathi Mthethwa and the façade of an unshakable politician

Nathi Mthethwa plunged to his death from the 22nd floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Paris on September 30. His death has resonances with that of Nat Nakasa, who died in similar circumstances in Harlem, New York, on July 14 1965.

Ironically, Mthethwa played a key role in the repatriation of Nakasa’s mortal remains to his ancestral land in August 2014, half a century after his departure. Whether he jumped or was pushed is immaterial at this stage. What remains is that South Africa has lost one of its loyal servants whose legacy is a mixed bag of fortunes.

Following his appointment as the minister of arts and culture in 2014, the arts fraternity was understandably displeased, owing to the fact that Mthethwa had no recognisable arts background. The prevailing sentiment was that he had been demoted from the police, and the arts portfolio served as a dumping site for politicians who had failed elsewhere.

There was also the dark cloud of the Marikana massacre, which occurred during his tenure in the police. Article after article, talk show after talk show, lamented the plight of the arts under Mthethwa, even before he could set foot in the office. This narrative unsettled him. In response, he rallied his communicators and senior management, insisting they could not be quiet in the face of such an onslaught. The departmental communicators wrote back, dismissing speculation that he had been demoted.

As a functionary in the department, I suggested to a colleague who was one of the senior communicators that refuting the dominant narrative would not shift the public perception. What Mthethwa needed, I argued, was substantive action in the arts to change the discourse. I had long understood that one cannot fight the media with the media.

At the time, my unit was on the verge of obtaining official approval for the reinterment and repatriation of Nakasa’s remains. The project was approved by his predecessor, Paul Mashatile, and we were already collaborating with media personalities such as Mathatha Tsedu and Joe Thloloe. Nakasa had left South Africa in 1964, and a year later, he plunged from a Harlem skyscraper under mysterious circumstances. For nearly two decades, the South African media fraternity had been trying to repatriate his remains.

In our briefing notes to Mthethwa, we underscored the importance of the initiative not only as a gesture of honouring Nakasa’s legacy, but also as an opportunity to build a partnership between media and government. We recommended that he personally inform the family, to share the news and plan the reburial arrangements. Instead of calling them or summoning them to his office, Mthethwa decided to visit the Nakasa family at their family home in Umlazi. He also met privately with Peter Magubane, who was Nakasa’s friend and colleague.

The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) was about to host the Nat Nakasa Awards for Courageous Journalism on June 23 2014, which was to be addressed by Cyril Ramaphosa, then deputy president of South Africa. The occasion was held in Cape Town, and in introducing the keynote speaker, Mthethwa announced that the department had received approval for Nakasa’s repatriation.

By the end of that weekend, the story had appeared in most of the country’s newspapers, and it went on to become one of the leading news items of 2014. The narrative around Mthethwa shifted, for a moment.

This marked the beginning of my working relationship with him. In August 2014, we travelled with the Nakasa family to the US to bring back his remains, which were later reburied with dignity in the Heroes’ Acre in Chesterville. It was a rare exemplary moment when the media and government worked in harmony.

After Nakasa’s reburial, Mthethwa turned his attention to the youth. Working in close collaboration with Sanef, we developed a national competition for high school learners and an essay competition for journalism students. The prizes included internships at some of South Africa’s leading media houses. One of the debate winners went on to study at Harvard University the following year, while several journalists launched their careers through the internship programme.

I got to know Mthethwa the person when I formed part of his delegation to Havana, Cuba, in June and July 2015. On Wednesday, July 1 2015, he asked me to accompany him to a meeting with his Cuban counterpart, Julián González Toledo, in the historic city of Bayamo, deep in the rural Granma province.

Away from the trappings of officialdom, the security details and the rigid protocols, we walked freely through the streets. At one point, he even slipped into a local barbershop for a shave. In those moments, we spoke openly about our passions, our anxieties, and our vulnerabilities. It was then that I began to see that beneath the façade of a tough politician was a kind and fragile man.

That evening, when we landed in Havana, we boarded a passenger bus straight from the plane. Suddenly, there was a frantic speed chase, a diplomatic vehicle trying to catch up with the bus. The bus stopped, and only at that moment did it strike me that Mthethwa was a minister and, therefore, was not supposed to be travelling with civilians on a bus.

I worked with Mthethwa on many other projects, and there were moments when he would not be pleased, and he would yell at me and my colleagues in frustration. Afterwards, he would call to commend us on something else. In time, I came to understand this was his way of apologising, or at least extending a truce.

Even after I left the department in 2016, he occasionally reached out for advice. During my tenure, I had helped him host prominent writers including Ben Okri and Wole Soyinka. In 2017, he approached me because he wanted to invite Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o for the Africa Month commemoration. Ngũgĩ had long been one of his intellectual heroes, and Mthethwa was overjoyed when he finally had the opportunity to host him.

Some of Mthethwa’s ideas were either never implemented or were total failures. In August 2015, he launched the Living Legends Legacy Programme, intended to keep cultural icons actively engaged in the sector both for skills transfer and also for earning income in their old age.

In his speech at the launch, he declared: “Our strategic objective is to ensure that there is transference of skills, knowledge and experience to the younger generation, while at the same time creating opportunities for our legends to continue pursuing viable careers in the arts.” This programme aimed to bridge the intergenerational gap by ensuring that, as the elders faded away, they continued to nurture and inspire young talents, while also addressing the long-standing concern that many arts legends died as paupers.

With all its noble intentions, the project was marred by corruption, leading to one of the arts legends being convicted and spending the rest of his life in jail.

Mthethwa’s tenure as minister of arts and culture was far from perfect, and being branded the “minister of condolences” was undoubtedly one of his lowest moments.

After the passing of Winnie Mandela in April 2018, a number of portraits were produced in her honour. I suggested to Mthethwa that this was a low-hanging fruit and that the department ought to create an exhibition space for such works. His response was most telling. With a mixture of pain and frustration, he resignedly said, “The officials in the department are letting me down, because these artworks could form part of the Art Bank.” I could hear helplessness in his voice, and I was reminded once again that beneath the façade of a tough politician, lay a man who was fragile and deeply vulnerable.

In retrospect, the repatriation of Nakasa’s remains stands as one of his best achievements. There is a bitter irony in the fact that, this very week, we await with solemn anticipation the return of Mthethwa’s own mortal remains, after he too plunged to death in foreign lands, echoing Nakasa’s fate 60 years ago.

Siphiwo Mahala is a former civil servant, now an Associate Professor in the English Department, University of Johannesburg.