WATCH: Mbeki’s ‘bodyguard’ swaps water bottles before his KZN speech

Former president Thabo Mbeki seems to have taken precautionary measures following video clips showing a man swapping water bottles when he attended late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s memorial in KwaZulu-Natal on Tuesday.

The former president had nothing but good things to say about Mugabe, who passed on last week at a hospital in Singapore.

Mbeki called Mugabe “a combatant and true African patriot”, among other things.

The former president trended on social media for his speech that seemed to have divided those who heard it. However, clips of a man, said to be his bodyguard, seemingly swapping water bottles have also been circulating.

In the clip, the former president chants along with the crowd while holding his bottled water before his bodyguard swaps it out.

Watch the clip below:

It seems the former president just prefers to drink his own water. While addressing the OR Tambo memorial lecture in 2017, Mbeki refused to drink water offered to him by Mmasechaba Ndlovu, who was an MC of the event.

“Not this water, this water,” he said as he took his own bottled water, much to the audience’s laughter.

Watch the video below courtesy of the SABC:

It was reported earlier this year that acting eThekwini mayor Fawzia Peer being rushed to hospital after drinking “poisoned” bottled water.

The news was first shared by eThekwini Democratic Alliance caucus leader Nicole Graham, who said at the time: “The speaker just announced that there is paraffin in someone’s water bottle and told us not to drink the water. The deputy mayor just left abruptly covering her mouth. What the hell just happened?! I think we just witnessed someone try to poison Fawzia Peer. The mood in Durban council remains strangely cavalier.”

“I’m informed that Fawzia Peer has been hospitalised after drinking poisoned/contaminated water that was placed on her desk in a water bottle during today’s Council meeting. How the hell do we work in these conditions?” she later said.

The bottle was taken for testing at eThekwini’s municipal laboratory and Peer returned to work the following day after being treated for burns to her lips, tongue, and throat.

Laboratory results, however, came back clear.