Illustrative image, from left: Former president Jacob Zuma. (Photo: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg via Getty Images) | The late former Cabinet minister Nathi Mthethwa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Oupa Bopape) | Durban businessman Thoshan Panday. (Photo: Sandile Ndlovu / Sunday Times) | Former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head General Johan Booysen. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla / Netwerk24) 
Former minister of police and Ambassador to France, Nathi Mthethwa, has been seriously implicated in several commissions over the years.
Mthethwa, who was 58, was found dead outside the Hyatt Regency hotel in Paris on Tuesday, 30 September, after he had booked a room on the 22nd floor. The tragedy is still being investigated. He was appointed to that country in December 2023.
Read more: Nathi Mthethwa’s Paris death — Ramaphosa offers condolences while French authorities investigate
Most recently, he was fingered at the Madlanga Commission, which heard on 19 September from KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkwananzi that Mthethwa, when he was police minister in Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet, had pressured him to reinstate disgraced Crime Intelligence (CI) head Richard Mdluli.
Mdluli treated the CI Secret Service slush fund like a personal ATM between 2008 and 2012, living the life of a Tinder Swindler with Mthethwa tagging along.
Read more: Police Crime Intelligence takes a joyride with state security slush fund
We have heard this before
In 2018, at the Zondo Commission and 2019, at the Mokgoro Commission, all of this was aired in public.
There is no doubt that Mthetwha would have been called as a witness in the freshly pressed Nkabinde Inquiry into suspended Gauteng Director of Public Prosecutions, Andrew Chauke.
Chauke faces the inquiry into his fitness to hold office after authorising the institution of racketeering charges in terms of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act against former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head Major-General Johan Booysen and members of the Cato Manor unit, “regardless of the defence of those actions in subsequent review proceedings brought by Booysen”.
Read more: Old ghosts of Zuma State Capture era come to haunt suspended Gauteng DPP Andrew Chauke
The current Madlanga Commission appears to have lanced a boil in the SAPS, and dominoes have begun to fall.
The heat is clearly on with the SIU rounding up Thembisa Hospital thieves and the arrest of tenderpreneur Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala.
Booysen (and many others, including Pravin Gordhan, Ivan Pillay and Johann van Loggerenberg) was targeted by those who had infiltrated and captured the NPA, SAPS and the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), in an attempt to shield Jacob Zuma, his son and various known grifters or benefactors nationally and in KZN.
These individuals included Chauke, former acting National Director of Public Prosecutions Nomgcobo Jiba and Mthethwa.
“Minister Mthethwa himself was responsible for the controversial appointment of Mdluli as head of CI,” Booysen stated in his affidavit to the Zondo Commission in 2018.
“The acting National Provincial Commissioner at the time, Tim Williams, commented publicly that the appointment was ‘completely unusual’ and ‘not regular’,” Booysen set out in a 500-page affidavit with annexures.
Booysen was on the spoor of several Zuma family “business” connections, including Thoshan Panday, currently in custody, facing 27 counts of fraud and or tax evasion.
Read more: NPA: Panday family members deeply implicated in 2010 Soccer World Cup corruption case
Siphoning off secret funds
Mdluli forked out R195,581.45 from the fund to erect a boundary wall around Mthethwa’s private residence in Kwambonambi, KZN.
The Zondo Commission heard from intelligence officer Colonel Dhanajaya Naidoo that he had made three claims from the secret service account for funds to pay for the minister’s wall.
Naidoo also spoke of the gift of a R400,000 Mercedes, purchased through the account and which Naidoo had personally delivered to the minister in Pretoria.
Apart from implicating himself and Mdluli, Naidoo (in witness protection) also implicated former minister of police Bheki Cele and former CI chief financial officer General Solly Lazarus.
‘Journalists are following me’
Naidoo confessed that Mdluli had instructed him to retrieve the vehicle as Mthethwa had claimed that “journalists were following him”.
Later, Mthethwa had attempted to justify the spend, claiming the Inspector General of Intelligence had exonerated him and that as a minister, he had been “entitled” to such security measures.
He had called in to the late Karima Brown’s show on 702 after she had interviewed Booysen about the secret fund spending. Mthethwa was livid, but he never took up a later challenge by Booysen for a face-to-face debate.
Booysen told both the Zondo and the Mokgoro commissions that he had personally assisted in the investigation of the looting of the Secret Services Account.
While the main investigation had been conducted by Colonel Kobus Roelofse from the DPCI, better known as the Hawks, the looting of the slush fund had been probed by Brigadier Simon Madonsela.
Read more: State Capture: The prosecutors were the willing executioners too
Madonsela had sought Booysen’s assistance as elements in CI were obstructing the investigation.
“After Madonsela had subpoenaed documents from CI in KZN, he was recalled to Pretoria and the investigation [was] removed from him by General Lesetja Mothiba. Mothiba had said the instruction had come from then National Commissioner Riah Phiyega”.
Ministerial overreach
During a flurry of papers exchanged between Booysen and the NPA while he was being hunted, it emerged that NPA prosecutor Simphiwe Mlotshwa had filed an affidavit exposing that Jiba (then acting NPA head) had contacted him in 2012, requesting him to sign an indictment against Booysen and the Cato Manor Unit for racketeering.
Mlotshwa had refused to press charges as there had been no accompanying documents.
This was the year Booysen was also investigating influential KZN ANC members Peggy Nkonyeni and Mike Mabuyakhulu, in the famous “Amigos” matter, as well as Panday’s case.
Read more: ‘Amigos’ corruption trial: Lead prosecutor’s removal, explained
Booysen told the Zondo Commission that NPA prosecutor Anthony Mosing had recorded handwritten notes of a meeting between Mthethwa and prosecutors at the NPA head office in Pretoria, which had coincided with continued pressure by Jiba to prosecute him.
The email trail
“In Mosing’s notes, I am referred to as a ‘suspect’,” said Booysen, adding he was in possession of a letter from Skumbuzo Ndhlovu, of the Civilian Secretariat in the minister’s office, which confirmed he was assisting the NPA in the Cato Manor matter.
Further proof, he said, was an email from Chauke to Mlotshwa (then acting DPP in KZN) pressuring him to prosecute and that he would “take up the matter with the acting NDPP (Jiba) as well as the minister (Mthethwa)”.
The notes also revealed how prosecutors conspired to exclude KZN prosecutors and to involve those at the national level.
“It is my respectful opinion that Minister Mthethwa had no legitimate reason to meet with prosecutors and to make demands,” noted Booysen.
Mthethwa swore his allegiance to the Zuma family. It may have cost him his life. DM