The Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, has sent his condolences and message of support to the family of slain former world boxing champion Zolani Tete, who was shot dead outside his home on Friday.
Zolani ‘Last Born’ Tete was shot and killed in Mdantsane and died at the age of 38, while a 27-year-old woman who was in the car with him was shot multiple times and is currently in hospital.
“I want to speak first to his family and to the people of Mdantsane. There are no words I can offer tonight that will be equal to what you have lost,” McKenzie said in a statement.
“Your son’s name will not be treated lightly by this country, and my department and I are at your disposal in the days ahead, in whatever way is useful to you.
“He was sitting at his own gate, waiting for it to open, and that is where they came for him. I will not speculate about who did this or why. That investigation belongs to the South African Police Service, and the detectives working it tonight need support.”
Two armed men in balaclavas are said to have got out of a car in Mdantsane and shot Tete in cold blood at his own front gate and are now on the run.
“I appeal to anyone who saw anything, who knows anything, who heard anything, to come forward. Somebody in that community knows who did this.
“Boxing South Africa and my Department will consult the family on how the sport should honour him.
“Lala ngoxolo, Last Born. You carried this flag into rooms it had no business being in, and you did it once in just eleven seconds. Your legacy will endure, though, without a timer,” the minister added.
Tete was a two-division world champion. In 2014 he went to Kobe in Japan, into a foreign ring in front of a crowd that wanted him beaten, and came home with the IBF junior-bantamweight title.
He took the WBO bantamweight title and defended it against the best of his generation, in Belfast, in Yekaterinburg, wherever the fight was put in front of him.
And on a November night in 2017 he did something no fighter in the history of the sport had done: he ended a world title fight in eleven seconds. That record still stands. It belongs to the boy from NU 12, Mdantsane.
Mdantsane has produced more world champions than many nations manage in a century. Welcome Ncita. Vuyani Bungu, who trained Zolani and whom Zolani idolised as a boy, sneaking his kit to school under his uniform.
- The Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, has sent his condolences and message of support to the family of slain former world boxing champion Zolani Tete, who was shot dead outside his home on Friday.
- Zolani ‘Last Born’ Tete was shot and killed in Mdantsane and died at the age of 38, while a 27-year-old woman who was in the car with him was shot multiple times and is currently in hospital.
- “I want to speak first to his family and to the people of Mdantsane.
- There are no words I can offer tonight that will be equal to what you have lost,” McKenzie said in a statement.
- “Your son’s name will not be treated lightly by this country, and my department and I are at your disposal in the days ahead, in whatever way is useful to you.
