Sibusiso Sgudla Archives

Read: Vusi Shongwe is my cousin, Sibusiso Sgudla is my brother

by 013NEWS Reporter | Mar 9, 2018 | Politics

The influencial businessman takes the 013NEWS reporter into his heart, revealing some of the key players in Mpumalanga politics as his family members.

PRET leader Themba ‘Masofa’ Sgudla has told 013NEWS that Mpumalanga ANC treasurer Vusi Shongwe is his cousin and PEC member Sibusiso Sgudla his brother.

Not going into details, Masofa said they were raised by a very strong father who taught them “how to walk, how to live and how to give services to society, in response to what God can do for you”.

“That is a teaching that we got and today we are reaping from it,” he said.

Sgudla said his father, whose name he didn’t divulge, has always been there in the ANC.

“If I can tell you who my father is and what he was doing for the movement you can be shocked but we don’t claim that because we were told not to do that. Not in their names,” Sgudla said.

“We are children of the same cadres who kept the ANC alive all these years but we don’t boast with it as we were taught not to,” he told the 013NEWS reporter.

He said Sibusiso, the powerful politician residing in Ermelo and the PEC convener of the ANC in the Gert Sibande region, is the child of the younger brother of his father.

“He’s my brother,” Masofa said.

“And if you look at Vusi Shongwe, same blood. He is the child of the sister of my father,” Sgudla said.

Read: Vusi Shongwe is my cousin, Sibusiso Sgudla is my brother

Vusi Shongwe. PIC MfisoDIGITAL/ZK.

“You must look at the posture of Vusi Shongwe, posture of Sibusiso and myself is one thing,” Sgudla told the reporter.

Themba ‘Masofa’ Sgudla. PIC MfisoDIGITAL/MLM.

WATCH: Sgudla explains how PRET will work

Sibusiso Sgudla. PIC MfisoDIGITAL/ZK.

“Then if you look at Mandla Sgudla inKwaggafontein and Herschelle Sigudla, the physiotherapist in eMalahleni, same. Those are my brothers. Herschelle was born right after me, he’s the child of my father and mother,” Sgudla said.

Sgudla was replying to a statement released by SANCO this week charging that he should be investigated and charged for “money-laundering” for his habit of dishing out R200 notes to poor people during community meetings.

He said their success is due to the teachings they got from their parents that “a giving hand is blessed”.

“And today we are reaping from it,” he said. “Go to God and ask what is “money-laundering”?When God creates all of us we are given a different mandate and the mandate that I was born for I know and I will die with it,” he said.

He said he did training in the 1980s as an upholsterer and began a business fixing and covering furniture for the people of eMalahleni, which is where his nickname ‘Masofa’, meaning ‘sofas’, come from.

He was merely a 23-year-old boy with “a mind to enter business and unleash my God-given business talents”.

“I have worked hard for everything I have and when I give people money it’s my money. I don’t steal money. I can do anything I like with my money, including buying expensive things and enjoying it alone but I don’t want to do that. I want to help people develop and become billionaires like myself and which is the reason PRET was formed.Why do they bark at me for my money? he asked.

He said he doesn’t do tenderpreneurship”, saying those who say so are lying.

“Everybody knows I’m not a tenderprenuer. Those who say I’m a tenderprenuer are mistaken. I’ve never filled up a form and applied to the municipalities, no, no. I don’t do that. I’m an enteprenuer, a businessperson, a property developer, an industrialist. I buy land and develop it. I own office blocks across the province and in Gauteng,” he said.

(edited by ZK)

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Sibusiso Sgudla apologised for insulting journalist

by 013NEWS Reporter | Jun 5, 2017 | Featured, News, Politics

He had cussed ‘msunu ka nyoko’ at the reporter.

One of the powerful politicians of the African National Congress in the Mpumalanga province met and apologised to City Press journalist Sizwe Sama Yende after calling him ‘msunu ka nyoko’.

This information is contained in Sama Yende’s newly published book called ‘Eerie Assignment’.

‘Msunu ka nyoko’ means ‘your mother’s genitals’.

Sama Yende said he was interviewing ANC provincial executive member Sibusiso Sgudla in 2011 about allegations that he used his powers as PEC member to influence the employment of unqualified individuals including one woman who was allegedly his girlfriend.

He said Sgudla, who resides in Ermelo, was breathing heavily on the phone, threatening that if Sama Yende ever wrote and published an article that Sgudla was sleeping with the woman in exchange for the job he’d get him, adding ‘msunu ka nyoko’!

This was during the time of violent protests in Ermelo which were fuelled by the political fight between Sgudla and Bongani Phakathi.

“Sgudla and I had a history from his days as a marketing manager in the Govan Mbeki local municipality in Secunda,” Sama Yende wrote in Eerie Assignment.

“I reported serially around 2002 and 2003 that he was alleged to be complicit in fraud and he obviously took offence and viewed this as a personal attack,” said Same Yende.

“I met Sgudla in person for the first time in 2015. We shook hands and he apologised for insulting me by my mother’s cunt,” wrote Sama Yende.

Eerie Assingment hit the book-shelves at the end of May 2017.

With an outer cover of the Mbombela stadium while under construction, the memoir details Sama Yende’s life being an investigative journalist under the leadership of Premier David Mabuza.

The 21-chapter memoir speaks of the division, infighting, corruption, purging of comrades and assassinations of whistleblowers that have taken place since Mabuza took power in 2008 and the intimidations and buying of journalists to drop stories exposing the corruption of politicians in Mabuza’s circles.

Sama Yende said he had been called all sorts of names, asked to take money to drop stories and even had his life threatened.

He said he started writing Eerie Assignment in 2014, the year Sunday Times investigative journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika released Nothing Left to Steal.

He said he was inspired – by Wa Afrika’s Nothing Left to Steal – to sit down and write his own in the war of exposing corruption.

Writing a foreword in Eerie Assignment, Wa Afrika said: “Just hours after I agreed, under duress of course, to pen the foreword to his book, Sizwe emailed it to me and I spent the whole night reading it”.

“I was spooked, shocked and stunned, the book brought back the nightmares I have been trying very hard to forget, the pain we endured, the public humiliation we faced and the malicious propaganda we survived,” he wrote.

Sibusiso Sgudla apologised for insulting journalist

The book is 371 pages long and is selling at R250 per copy.

“This book might not be a masterpiece from your favourite author but it will blow your mind and force you to wake up and smell the coffee,” said Wa Africa.

(edited by ZK)

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