Carl Niehaus is the former spokesman for South African ruling party the African National Congress, former spokesman for Nelson Mandela, and was a political prisoner after being convicted of treason against South Africa’s former apartheid government.
On July 7, 2021, Niehaus’ ANC membership was suspended over “inflammatory speeches” he made outside former president Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla home.
Carl Niehaus supported Zuma, who was fighting a Constitutional Court order that ordered him to be jailed for 15 months for being in contempt of court.
Background
Carl Niehaus’ Biography and Family Life With Wife Mafani Gunguluza
Despite being the ruling party, South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) has faced a lot of scandals over the years as many of its members have continued to drag themselves and the party’s name to the mud. One of such members is Carl Niehaus. Though he is a white South African, Niehaus also fought against apartheid and when the blacks finally reclaimed the state, he was privileged to hold a good number of high political positions. While some may call him a respectable politician, others don’t see him as one.
Another area of Carl Niehaus’s life that has abhorred normalcy is his relationships and marital life. The politician has been married a number of times – all of which ended in a divorce, including his marriage to Mafani Gunguluza. When he married her, everyone believed he was now going to keep a wife, but it did not end as expected. Carl Niehaus has a very interesting story that would be worth your while.
In May 2012, the Mail&Guardian reported on how Carl Niehaus had run up an additional string of debts and had sought to borrow money from his friend, Andries Nel purportedly to cover funeral expenses for his father. Nel, who gifted money to Carl to help cover expenses, was reported to have subsequently attempted to attend the funeral without success, as Carl’s father had not in fact died.
Qualification
He Has A Bachelor’s Degree In Theology From The University of South Africa
Though there is no information about the basic and high school education of Carl Niehaus, he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Theology from the University of South Africa (UNISA) while in prison – in 1988. In 1990, he was also awarded an honorary degree by the same university. Carl Niehaus also claimed to have gotten a Master’s degree and a Doctorate in Theology from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
However, in 2008, it was discovered that Carl Niehaus had lied about his Master’s and Doctorate degrees which was a huge embarrassment for the politician.
While In Theology School, Carl Niehaus Became A Political Prisoner Following His Arrest
Currently, there is very little or no information about the kind of childhood Carl Niehaus led. We know that he was born on the 25th of December in 1959 to his mother, Magrietha Niehaus. His father was simply known as Mr. Carl Niehaus
As a young theology student at the University of South Africa (UNISA), Carl Niehaus joined the fight against the apartheid rule in the country and implicated himself when he confided in his flatmate that he was responsible for blowing up gasworks at Johannesburg. He had used a police-issued camera to take photographs of the target and drove for his mission in a police car. What was worse was that he was telling all of these to a police informant.
His flatmate reported him to security agencies and he was arrested and found guilty of the crimes. On the 25th of November 1983, he was jailed and sentenced to 15 years in prison while his then-girlfriend, Jansie Lourens, whom he implicated as well for betraying the Afrikaans, was handed a four-year sentence.
Fortunately for him, he was finally released in 1991 after serving about 8 years in prison while his girlfriend – who later became his wife – served her full four-year sentence.
Role In Fight Against Apartheid
A student of theology, Niehaus was months away from his final exams in 1980 when he was expelled from RAU for putting up campus posters that supported Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
In the same year, Carl Niehaus resigned from the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) as he was opposed to their compliance with the apartheid system. He joined and became a deacon in the African Dutch Reformed Church in Alexandra and in July 1980 Niehaus joined the African National Congress.
He worked in the ANC underground inside South Africa until he and his fiancé (and later wife) Johanna (Jansie) Lourens were arrested in August 1983.
Carl and Jansie were found guilty of High Treason and he received a 15 year sentence while Jansie was sentenced to four years in prison.
Jansie served her full sentence and Niehaus served seven and a half years of his sentence. Carl Niehaus was released from prison in March 1991 following ANC negotiations with the previous Nationalist Party Government for the release of political prisoners.
ANC Roles
Immediately after his release Carl Niehaus became the media liaison spokesperson for the ANC, and from 1992 until the General Election on 27 April 1994 he was head of the ANC’s media liaison unit.
After having served for two consecutive terms on the Regional Executive Council (REC) of the ANC in Gauteng (the old PWV Region), Niehaus was elected at the ANC’s National Conference in Bloemfontein (December 1994) to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. He also chaired the NEC’s Commission on Religious Affairs.
In 1996, Niehaus was a Member of Parliament in the National Assembly. He chaired the Select Committee on Correctional Services, and also served on the Select Committee for Justice and Communication. The Transformation Forum on Correctional Service was also chaired by him.
Carl Niehaus Is A Former Spokesman For Nelson Mandela
Following his release from prison and the first post-apartheid election which saw Nelson Mandela become the first black president of South Africa in 1994, Carl Niehaus was appointed the presidential spokesperson that year. He also became the Chairman of the Correctional Services Committee and a Member of the Parliament.
After about two years of serving as the presidential spokesman, he became South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands and after his tenure, he was welcomed back to South Africa with the position of Executive Director of the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Re-integration of Offenders.
Everything looked perfect for Carl Niehaus until 2009 when it was discovered that he was living above his means and mismanaging his own finances which had led him into debt and fraud. As a result of this, he had to step down from being a spokesman of his party, ANC.
Age
Carl Niehaus was born on 25 December 1959.
Love Life
Carl Got Married To Mafani Gunguluza In September 2008
In September 2008, Carl Niehaus got married to his beautiful wife, Mafani Gunguluza. The couple seemed to be happily married, even though very little was known about Gunguluza. Nothing about who she really was and what she did for a living was known.
For this reason, we can say that she is best known as Carl Niehaus’s wife or rather ex-wife now. After four years of their marriage, he told 702 Radio that they were no longer a couple in 2012. According to him, their marriage had to come to an end as a result of some irreconcilable differences.
Mafani Gunguluza was with Carl Niehaus when he stepped down as ANC spokesman on the account of mismanagement of finance and fraud. We cannot tell if his political issues contributed to their divorce, seeing that they kept their family life private.
Since their divorce, Carl Niehaus has continued living his life and was spotted at a restaurant in 2019 with a young lady, Benie, who he has since confirmed to be his girlfriend.
It is not clear whether he and Mafani Gunguluza had children together, but there are reports that he has a daughter named Khanya following a tweet he posted on her 10th birthday. In another picture tweet posted on September 19, 2020, he mentioned his daughter and grandson. It is not known which of his wives gave birth to her.
Mafani Gunguluza Was Carl Niehaus’ Third Wife
Before getting married to Mafani Gunguluza, Carl Niehaus was married and divorced twice. In 1986, he got married to his girlfriend, Jansie Lourens, who was incarcerated with him in prison. Jansie Lourens was actually the one who brought Carl Niehaus into joining the fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa, but shortly after his release from prison, they were divorced.
After his separation from his first wife, Carl got married to Linda Thango. Reports have it that she was the reason why he started living above his means. Linda, who was a management consultant, was known to live an extravagant life, and when Carl got married to her, he adopted the lavish lifestyle. However, their marriage caved in under the pressure.
Carl Niehaus and his wife Johanna Lourens (Jansie) were married in prison. Niehaus was released from prison in 1991 and divorced Jansie shortly thereafter. He has had two more divorces.
In 2017, He Was The Spokesperson For Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association
Despite all the scandals Carl Niehaus was involved in, he was still elected to become a spokesperson for Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association (MKMVA), the committee set up to campaign for Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to become the presidential candidate for ANC.
Not just that his team failed at delivering Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma as the presidential candidate of ANC, Niehaus openly spoke ill of Comrade Jessie Duarte, the Secretary-General of ANC. He said that Duarte attacked and sabotaged his efforts for the party since the fight against apartheid rule, a statement that the MKMVA had to apologize for.
In 2021, he was suspended from all his positions in ANC for criticizing the party’s leadership and disobeying the instructions of ANC to bring an end to MKMVA.
Controversies
Suspension
In a letter dated 7 July 2021, ANC’s deputy secretary-general, Jessie Duarte, informed Carl Niehaus that the NEC had also temporarily suspended his membership of the party.
The letter stated that Niehaus’s conduct contravened several of the party’s rules.
NEC also stated that it had decided to institute disciplinary action against Niehaus within 30 days. The disciplinary hearing was adjudicated by the party’s National Disciplinary Committee. Duarte’s letter said Niehaus would be served with a charge sheet in due course which would outline the charges against him and his “rights as a member”.
Responding to the suspension, Niehaus said he was planning to appeal the decision and added that he remained the UMkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) national spokesperson.
The MKMVA was at the forefront of the campaign to prevent the arrest of Zuma.
On 8 July 2021, Carl Niehaus was arrested live on air in the middle of an interview. Niehaus was arrested for organizing a #FreeJacobZuma protest campaign outside Estcourt Correctional Centre in Karl Niehaus arrest video;
Arrest
Fraudulent Qualifications
Carl Niehaus’s alleged degree in Industrial Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a PhD in Theology at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands raised much controversy.
In 2009, it was revealed that Niehaus did not have a degree from the University of Utrecht and that he had in fact falsified additional information regarding his qualifications and work for the ANC. Niehaus claimed he obtained a doctoral degree in theology at Utrecht during his tenure as South Africa’s ambassador in The Hague from 1997-2000.
Following an enquiry, a university official told the Beeld newspaper, “I can inform you that Mr Carl Niehaus had not obtained a doctorate in Theology in the period you mentioned.”
Beeld also reported that Niehaus had never actually attained a degree from Wits. It quoted a university spokesperson, Shirona Patel, as saying: “We can confirm that he was registered as a student, but never graduated.”
Faking Father’s Death
Carl Niehaus Faked His Mother’s Death To Get Money To Pay Off A Debt
One of the things Carl Niehaus was accused of was faking his mother’s death to collect a loan. It was discovered that he was in debt of R4.3 million, an amount that he was owing to his landlord for renting a two-bedroom apartment in Sandton.
He was seeking for a loan to bury his mother who was alive and to get the loan, he went as far as forging the signature of the Gauteng Provincial Minister – an act that he said he confessed to hours after committing. This was not the first time he was faking the death of a parent. In 2011, Carl Niehaus was reported to have borrowed money to bury his father who was still alive at the time.
With all the major positions Carl Niehaus had held before he had to step down from being ANC spokesman and all the monetary remuneration he must have received, it was obvious that he was bad at managing funds. The act of lying about his parent’s death brought his name, which was once esteemed, to so much disrepute.
Mauritius Trip
Carl Niehaus apparently convinced the owner of a travel agency to temporarily cover the expenses of a family holiday to Mauritius and when he was expected to repay the amount of money, he refused to do so. He was forced to resign from the ANC in February 2009.
Niehaus approached Cheryl Clur, an owner of a travel agency in East London and asked her to organise a last-minute trip to Mauritius. She said Niehaus told her he had been ill with leukaemia, had chemotherapy and wanted a holiday for his wife and two children. Clur said Niehaus played on her emotions with his illness.
She paid for the holiday upfront as Niehaus kept on promising he would pay the next day. Then he left for the holiday. When Niehaus returned from the holiday Clur was unable to get him to settle the debt. Eventually, she tracked him down to the Rhema Church in Randburg, and he ended up paying back a token amount of R20,000.
Dismissal from ANC
Niehaus was dismissed on a collision course with the governing party and the last straw for the ANC came when he sent out a press release inviting journalists to come witness him opening a case of theft against senior officials over the non-payment of salaries.
Carl Niehaus distributed an “Urgent Media Alert” inviting the media to witness him laying charges against the ANC’s hierarchy — excluding his suspended boss, Secretary-General Ace Magashule — at the Johannesburg Police Station on behalf of disgruntled party staffers.
The party accused him of making false statements when he said he was representing other staffers, so he backtracked by saying he would lay the charges in his personal capacity, even though he maintained that aggrieved staff members helped him draft the statement.