![](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/800&operation=CROP&offset=0x375&resize=800x450.jpg\")
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South Africa’s ambassador to France, formerly a long-serving cabinet minister, was found dead on Tuesday at a Paris hotel in what is being treated as a possible suicide, the Paris prosecutor said.<\/p>\n
The body of Nkosinathi Emmanuel Nathi Mthethwa, 58, a close associate of South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma, was found in the interior courtyard of the upscale Hyatt hotel.<\/p>\n
The ambassador, usually known as Nathi Mthethwa, had reserved a room on the 22nd floor, and its secured window had been forced open with a pair of scissors that were found at the scene.<\/p>\n
His wife saw him a final time on Monday afternoon when he was supposed to go to a cocktail event, and then received a message in the evening “in which he apologised to her and expressed his intention to end his life”, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“Initial investigations suggest that this could have been a deliberate act, without the intervention of a third party,” she said, while emphasising the investigation would seek to collect all the details.<\/p>\n
Mthethwa had been an ambassador since December 2023.<\/p>\n
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called his death “untimely” and “a moment of deep grief in which government and citizens stand beside the Mthethwa family”.<\/p>\n
“Ambassador Mthethwa has served our nation in diverse capacities during a lifetime that has ended prematurely and traumatically,” he said.<\/p>\n
The circumstances of “his untimely death” are under investigation by the French authorities, a South African ministerial statement confirmed.<\/p>\n Mthethwa served as South Africa’s culture minister from 2014 to 2019, and then minister for sports, arts, and culture until 2023, according to his embassy website.<\/p>\n He was also the police minister from 2009 to 2014 and the security minister from 2008 to 2009.<\/p>\n Mthethwa also served on the board of directors of the 2010 Football World Cup local organising committee.<\/p>\n Between 2007 and 2022, he was a senior official in the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party since the first post-apartheid democratic elections in 1994.<\/p>\n He worked underground within the ANC’s military wing during apartheid and was notably arrested during the state of emergency in 1989.<\/p>\n AFP <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Africa’s ambassador to France, formerly a long-serving cabinet minister, was found dead on Tuesday at a Paris hotel in what is being treated as a possible suicide, the Paris prosecutor said. The body of Nkosinathi Emmanuel Nathi Mthethwa, 58, a close associate of South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma, was found in the interior […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[13789,15223,35,319,3304,1081,7451,2061,197],"class_list":{"0":"post-252203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-apologised","9":"tag-intended","10":"tag-life","11":"tag-mthethwa","12":"tag-nathi","13":"tag-paris","14":"tag-prosecutor","15":"tag-told","16":"tag-wife"},"yoast_head":"\nAfrican National Congress work<\/h2>\n