South Africa's ambassador to France found dead in Paris

Ambassador Nkosinathi Emmanuel "Nathi" Mthethwa's body was discovered outside a Paris hotel. His death is being treated as a possible suicide, the local presecutor's office says.

South Africa's ambassador to France, Nkosinathi Emmanuel Mthethwa, who was found dead outside a Paris hotel, had left a suicide message for his wife, the Paris prosecutor's office said.

Mthetwa's lifeless body was found on Tuesday in the interior courtyard of the upscale Hyatt hotel.

On Monday evening, his wife had reported her husband missing to the police after receiving a message "in which he apologized to her and expressed his intention to end his life," prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.

"Initial investigations suggest that this could have been a deliberate act, without the intervention of a third party," she said. 

She emphasized the investigation would seek to collect all the details.

The ambassador, better known as Nathi Mthethwa, had booked a room on the hotel's 22nd floor.

The safety mechanism of a window in his room had been forced open with scissors, the office had earlier said, but investigators found no signs of a struggle or traces of medication or narcotics.

58-year-old Mthethwa had been serving as ambassador to France since his appointment in December 2023.

'A moment of deep grief' — President Ramaphosa

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Mthethwa's "untimely passing" was "a moment of deep grief in which government and citizens stand beside the Mthethwa family."

Ramaphosa said Mthwethwa had served South Africa in a number of capacities "during a lifetime that has ended prematurely and traumatically."

South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) confirmed Mthethwa's death in a statement and said he "was a distinguished servant of the nation, whose career was marked by dedicated service in critical ministerial portfolios, including Minister of Police and Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture."

DIRCO said the circumstances of Mthethwa's "untimely death" were being investigated by French authorities.

Mthethwa had been South Africa's minister of police during the presidency of Jacob Zuma and was minister of arts and culture from 2014 to 2019, adding sport to his portfolio from 2019 to 2023.

He had previously served on the board of directors of the 2010 football World Cup local organizing committee and had also been part of the senior structures of the African National Congress (ANC) between 2007 and 2022.

He had been a member of the ANC's military wing and was arrested by the apartheid regime in 1989.