A Brother in the Trenches: The Revolutionary Blood that Bound Us
I never had a biological brother. The man who filled that sacred space in my life, who walked beside me through more than two decades of fire and hope, was Nkosentsha Shezi.
He left us on March 23, 2026, one day after his 50th birthday, after an illness that stole his voice far too soon. With his passing, part of me is going into the grave with him. I feel it physically—an ache where wholeness once lived. In my older age I am limping now, politically and personally, because the comrade who completed me is no longer here to steady my step. Yet, I am also flooded with gratitude, the kind that only revolutionary love can bestow. For Shezi was not just my friend; he was my soulmate in the struggle for justice and radical economic transformation in South Africa. The personal was always political between us, and the political was always deeply, tenderly, personal.
Our bond began more than twenty years ago in the crucible of the ANC’s internal battles, but it became unbreakable during the ten years I lived in KwaZulu-Natal. There, in the rolling hills and restless streets of KZN, we discovered each other not merely as comrades but as brothers. We shared the same fierce conviction: that the ANC, the movement we had both given our youth to, was betraying the liberation struggle’s roots. The promises of economic freedom for the black majority were being diluted, sold off to the same forces that had once propped up apartheid.
Radical Economic Transformation—RET—was not a slogan to us; it was the unfinished business of 1994. We believed, with every fibre of our beings, that land, wealth, and dignity had to be returned to the people who had bled for them. And we watched, with growing horror, as the ANC under new leadership drifted further from those roots.
Shezi carried within him a profound, radiant love for his Zulu heritage that illuminated everything he did. It was through him—patiently, generously, with the warmth of a true brother—that I learnt to love and understand Zulu history and culture. He opened the doors of Zulu pride to me: the epic tales of the warrior kings, the resilience of the Zulu nation against colonial onslaughts, the deep spiritual connection to the land and ancestors, the beauty of isiZulu language and its poetry, the rhythms of traditional dance and song that stir the soul.
Shezi made Zulu history live for me—not as distant textbook facts, but as living, breathing legacy. Through him I came to know the late King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu not merely as a monarch, but as a towering guardian of Zulu identity and dignity. Shezi facilitated introductions and conversations that built a strong bond of understanding and mutual respect between the King and myself.
More than anyone else, it was Nkosentsha Shezi who facilitated my acceptance into Zulu culture and the Zulu Nation. He stood as my guide, my advocate, my bridge into a world of such richness and strength.
I will never forget the day in March 2022 when the INJEJE yabeNguni Council—established by the late King Zwelithini himself—bestowed upon me the honorary warrior name Mpangazitha. The name, meaning “he who over-eats his enemies” in Zulu, was given in recognition of my lifelong commitment to the Struggle against apartheid and for true liberation. Shezi was more excited and prouder than anyone that day.
His face lit up with unbridled joy as the council bestowed Nguni praises upon me: UMpangazitha kaTambo, UMkhont’ obukhali, and others that spoke of valour and unbreakable unity with the people. More than anyone else, it was Shezi who popularised that beautiful honorary name. He used it in speeches, in media statements, in private conversations—always with such affection and pride. I treasure the name Mpangazitha dearly; it is a gift from the Zulu Nation, made even more precious because it came through the hands and heart of my brother Shezi.
Leaving the ANC was agony. For years we sat together through long difficult nights in Durban, Umlazi, KwaMashu, Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg, agonising over the final step. We spoke of loyalty forged over decades fighting in self-defence units, in the streets of our townships. We spoke of the families who had sacrificed alongside us. How could we walk away from decades of sacrifice and dedication?
Shezi’s voice was always calmer than mine—my short fuse would flare, and he would place a steady hand on my shoulder, reminding me that rage without strategy is just noise. “Brother, we fight smarter,” he would say. In turn, I would push him when I felt he was ready to concede too much. We were a perfect team precisely because we were so different: I the storm, he the anchor. Together we navigated the impossible.
Those convictions drew us repeatedly to the courts where President Jacob Zuma was hounded. We believed—and still believe—that he was targeted not for corruption alone, but because he embodied the RET faction’s challenge to the anti-RET forces that had captured the ANC and, we argued, the legal system itself.
We made countless trips together to the Pietermaritzburg High Court. We stood in long night vigils before his appearances, sharing thermoses of coffee and quiet prayers for strength. Those same convictions also took us on many trips to Nkandla to meet with President Jacob Zuma himself—journeys filled with deep conversation, shared meals, and unbreakable solidarity.
We issued joint press conferences, media statements, and fiery interviews defending Zuma and RET. I wrote articles; Shezi would read them at dawn and add his own sharp insights. We shared drafts late into the night, refining every word as if it were a weapon in the people’s arsenal. The bond was intense because it was total: our families knew one another. Our wives and children exchanged birthdays and sorrows. When my own household carried pain, Shezi’s family was there; when his carried joy, mine rejoiced. The personal and the political had merged into one living truth.
We travelled the length and breadth of the country together—long runs across dusty roads, endless meetings in community halls, strategising late into the night for the next mobilisation. We promoted RET with everything we had: pamphlets in townships, rallies in rural KwaZulu-Natal, interviews that sometimes cost us dearly. Shezi taught me patience; I taught him the necessity of an unyielding line when compromise threatened principle. We knew each other’s weaknesses and strengths as intimately as our own. In the chaos of the July 2021 uprisings—sparked by Zuma’s imprisonment and the sense that justice had been weaponised against the RET cause—our brotherhood reached its fiercest expression.
I was arrested live on SABC television outside the Estcourt Correctional Centre while addressing supporters. The cameras rolled as police led me away. Above the din I heard Shezi’s voice cutting through, clear and fierce: “Brother, be strong!” Those words carried me through the months that followed—the drawn-out case, the media storm, the attempts to break us. Shezi stood by me without wavering. He visited, he organised, he kept the fire burning. When the magistrate finally threw the case out, we celebrated like schoolboys.
Shezi arrived with food and sparkling wine. I still cherish the beautiful photo of Shezi, myself and my wife Noluthando, all three of us beaming with joy, giving the thumbs-up sign in victory. Laughter rang through the room as we toasted not just victory but the unbreakable thread between us.
The ANC’s vindictiveness left us both financially destitute, marginalised and hated for daring to speak truth. Yet we assisted each other with whatever little we had—small loans, shared meals, quiet acts of solidarity. We never gave up. With pain and disgust we finally left the ANC. In January 2023 we founded the African Radical Economic Transformation Alliance—ARETA. I became President, Shezi Secretary General. We worked shoulder to shoulder, building something pure from the ashes. For the sake of unity we later took the carefully considered, and correct step, of joining the EFF. The press conference where we announced that decision was raw with feeling—tears, embraces, the sense that we were stepping into a new chapter together.
Later Shezi chose a different path, leaving the EFF to join the MK Party while I remained, convinced that the EFF is my final political home. The decision to join the EFF brought its own deep personal pain, which Shezi shared with me as only a true brother could. After so many visits to Nkandla—trips we had made together with the rest of the executive of ARETA—when I travelled there to explain why I would not join the MK-Party and had decided instead to join the EFF, the gates of Nkandla were closed on me.
President Zuma refused to see me. Shezi stood with me at that moment of rejection at those closed gates of Nkandla, witnessing my pain and anger at being treated in that manner by a man I had supported through the most difficult trials and tribulations of his life. He fully understood how that painful incident led me to stop seeing Zuma altogether.
Yet Shezi himself remained, until his last breath, deeply loyal and fiercely supportive of Zuma. I fully respected and understood that. Our friendship was deep enough to embrace and respect each other’s respective positions, even when there were differences. We remained two individual revolutionaries with our own views and self-determination. Our brotherly love never required that we had to be replicas or copies of each other.
The tensions that followed between the EFF and the MK-Party—especially after the horrendous betrayal by Floyd Shivambu of the EFF’s Commander-in-Chief, Julius Malema—were real and substantial. I spoke harsh words about the MK-Party’s lack of ideological clarity and its organisational chaos. Yet our personal bond transcended every political divergence. We respected each other’s choices because we had earned that respect in the trenches. When I was sworn in as an EFF MP and Shezi, almost a year later, was sworn in as an MK-Party MP, we celebrated separately but with the same joy, texting each other photos and messages of pride.
Shezi’s illness cut his parliamentary career cruelly short. The MK-Party lost a dedicated and very capable MP. The last months were terribly painful. Throughout we stayed in constant contact. Even as his body weakened, his revolutionary spirit burned bright. We remained brothers to the end: laughing about old battles, planning what we could still do, affirming the love that had sustained us.
With Shezi’s passing, part of me is going into the grave with him. A part of my own life has been irretrievably lost. Part of myself, of us, goes to the grave with him. I feel exposed, vulnerable, less whole—because the comrade who completed my political commitment and my experience of life is gone. Yet, I am hugely grateful for what he selflessly gave me: revolutionary love. Che Guevara taught us that “the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” Shezi embodied that truth. He loved the people, he loved justice, he loved his Zulu heritage with every beat of his heart, and he loved me with a fierce, unwavering dedication.
I will continue the Struggle for both of us. I am weaker now, limping where once I ran beside him, but I carry his spirit in every step. The fight for radical economic transformation, for the soul of the liberation movement, for economic freedom in our lifetime for all poor and oppressed peoples, goes on.
To Shezi’s beloved wife, Thule, their children, the wider family, and his vast circle of friends and loved ones, and comrades in the MK Party and beyond: my deepest, most heartfelt sympathy. You have lost a husband, a father, a son, a leader. I have lost my brother. But the revolutionary love he gave us all remains—a torch we must now carry higher, brighter, together.
Hamba kahle, my dearest brother comrade.
A luta continua.
*Ambassador Carl Niehaus is an EFF Member of Parliament, and was a decades long friend and comrade of the late Honorable Nkosentsha Shezi, who was a strong proponent of Radical Economic Transformation (RET) and an MK-Party Member of Parliament.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
