McKenzie: From a gang leader to South Africa's sports minister

It is a history that he can’t escape from – but Gayton McKenzie embraces his prison sentence for bank robbery as a turning point in his unusual rise to power in South Africa.

The 50-year-old former gang leader was this week named in South Africa’s cabinet as the country formed a government of national unity (GNU) unveiled by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

This was after the dominant African National Congress (ANC) party lost its parliamentary majority and was forced to enter into a coalition with opposition parties.

McKenzie - the leader of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) party – was named minister of sports, art and culture.

And on Wednesday, with his cabinet colleagues, sat in rows during their swearing-in ceremony, he offered the kind of comic relief that was a stinging reminder of his criminal past.

“The last time a judge asked me to sit, he made me sit for 10 years,” he quipped, after Chief Justice Raymond Zondo had asked him to take a seat and sign his oath of office as cabinet minister.

“That was a long time (ago)!” the chief justice replied, to bursts of laughter by those in attendance.

Supporters of McKenzie say his journey from becoming a gang leader at the age of 16 to being a minister in an unprecedented government, is an encouragement of overcoming real adversity in life.

“My life consisted of going in and out of jail. I soon became a wanted person by various divisions of the police. I was arrested at age 21 finally,” the minister recounted on a recent thread on X platform.

“I appeared in court and was sentenced to 17 years to Grootvlei Maximum Prison.”

At the time, going to jail was like a badge of honour, McKenzie said. “Soon I ruled the whole prison and nothing would happen in that prison without my say so.”

Upon his release he ventured into various businesses – from selling fish, to running nightclubs and investing in mining. He also started a publishing company and sold motivational books drawing from his life experiences.

He became a millionaire by his estimation. But it took his involvement in a road accident to reach a turning point.

Political career

He soon shifted his gaze to politics and started his right-wing Patriotic Alliance party in 2013 that embraces a hard stance against immigration.

It won a surprising two percent of the vote nationally in the May 29 elections, with a strong showing in the Western Cape Province, where it got eight per cent of the vote. It won nine National Assembly seats.

When President Ramaphosa started courting parties for the formation of a coalition government, McKenzie openly declared interest in the home affairs ministry, which is in charge of immigration. But he added that he would be pragmatic in the negotiations.

“We don’t have enough seats that put us in a position to draw a line,” he reasoned in a tweet.

“We will listen to the president’s proposal and respect his constitutional right to decide who he wants in his cabinet.”

Ramaphosa’s 32-member cabinet has an additional 43 deputy ministers and has drawn public criticism as being bloated amid an economic crisis. Nevertheless, McKenzie is positive about the outcome of the coalition.

“Life has taught me that it is sometimes better to fight from within than outside, it also taught me that in a negotiation you will never get everything you want, I wanted Home Affairs, I didn’t get it,” he tweeted after the cabinet list was announced.

McKenzie has pledged to donate his entire parliamentary salary to the Joshlin Smith Foundation for missing children, according to local media reports.

“One hundred per cent of my salary I’m giving it to the Joshlin Smith Foundation for missing children for the duration of my stay in Parliament, 100% of my salary not 80% or 50%... Because I’m not here for money, I’m here to change the lives of our people,” he is quoted as saying.

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