The South Africa High Commissioner to Kenya, Mninwa Johannes Mahlangu, passed away on Sunday at the age of 72. The death was sudden, but it is reported that he had been ill only briefly.
The veteran diplomat also held the post of ambassador in Somalia, and he was the Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Nairobi.
South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ronald Lamola, in a statement announcing the death of Mahlangu, said so.
The ministry in its response to the death of the elderly said that it was an occasion to mourn together and also saluted Mahlangu as a devoted family man and a public servant who made his exit from this life on August 24, 2025.
Mahlangu, the very vociferous Member of Parliament (MP), born in Middleburg, Mpumalanga province on October 8, 1952, was known as as MJ among his co-workers and friends.
The Department of International Relations depicted him as a loyal South African with the background of a student activist during the South African transition era, thus making it his career.
He had first-hand experience of the consequences of the post-apartheid South African Constitution. So, he was among those elected in 1994 to the very first parliament of full democratic system.
He was not only the deputy chairperson of the National Council of Provinces but also the chairperson with the record of the two highest positions before going to be the ambassador.
Lamola praised the commitment to the task that Mahlangu consistently demonstrated when he called on South Africa’s foreign policy to be executed in the best way possible.
The ambassador, he said, was a typical South African who was not only in his African travel but also in his dealings with the global organizations and had his country at heart, fomenting love for it thereby making him a great ambassador of South Africa abroad.
