This Is Not the First Mysterious Death of an ANC Member in France

 This Is Not the First Mysterious Death of an ANC Member in France

By Noko Maleka|insight jozi news

History has a way of repeating itself, often in the most chilling of fashions. South Africans woke up yesterday to the shocking news that Nathi Mthethwa, former cabinet minister and now South Africa’s ambassador to France, was found dead—his body plummeted from the 22nd floor of a Paris building. While French police have not yet ruled out suicide, to many observers, the incident bears the eerie marks of something far more sinister: an assassination masked as self-inflicted death.

But this is not the first time an ANC member has met a mysterious end on French soil.

In March 1988, anti-apartheid activist Dulcie September, the ANC’s Chief Representative in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, was gunned down in broad daylight outside the ANC office in Paris. Five bullets ended her life. At the time, many fingers pointed to the apartheid government, whose long arm of terror reached far beyond South Africa’s borders. Yet, decades later, no one has ever been convicted for her murder. The case remains an unresolved scar on both South African and French history, buried beneath political diplomacy and unanswered questions.

The parallels are too striking to ignore.

Dulcie September, a voice of resistance, silenced in Paris.

Nathi Mthethwa, a seasoned politician and diplomat, found lifeless in the same country, under circumstances too bizarre to simply accept as suicide.

Both deaths speak to a haunting truth: that France, for ANC figures, has not always been a safe haven but rather a stage where unresolved shadows of South African politics seem to re-emerge.

The murder of Dulcie September was officially pinned on apartheid operatives, yet the absence of arrests and the lack of conclusive evidence has left historians and activists divided on what really happened. Was she silenced because she knew too much? Was there collusion beyond what the ANC or South Africans were ever told?

Now, with Mthethwa’s sudden and brutal fall, another question rises: could history be repeating itself in plain sight?

If Dulcie’s assassination was never fully solved, how then can South Africans be expected to trust that Mthethwa’s death will be handled with full transparency? Might these two deaths—nearly four decades apart—be connected by more than coincidence? Perhaps the ghost of Dulcie September has returned, not as a memory, but as a warning.

This tragedy should not be brushed aside with a premature conclusion of suicide. It should be the catalyst for a reopening of old wounds and old files, starting with September’s unresolved case, to understand whether there is a pattern of political silencing still haunting ANC members in France.

For now, French police continue their investigations. But South Africa, too, must demand answers—not just for Nathi Mthethwa, but for Dulcie September, whose death still lingers in the fog of mystery.

Because if these are not isolated events, then perhaps the truth has always been far darker than we were led to believe.