Sibusiso Bengu

Sibusiso Mandlenkosi Emmanuel Bengu (b 8 May 1934) is a prominent South African politician.

Bengu was born in Kranskop, KwaZulu-Natal and become a teacher in 1952. Sibusiso founded the Dlangezwa High School near Empangeni in 1969 and was principal until 1976. He completed a PhD in political sciences at the University of Geneva in 1974 and in 1977 he was appointed a professor at the University of Zululand. He served as Secretary-General of Inkatha Freedom Party but due to differences he clashed with Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

Sibusiso left South Africa in 1978 and served as secretary for research and social action for the Lutheran World Foundation. While he was abroad met and became friends with the Oliver Tambo, then acting President of the African National Congress, where the children of both the Thambo and Bengu families were educated while the ANC conducted its policy of "Liberation before education" in South Africa and in the process disrupting the education of thousands of children at the time. He returned in 1991 to become first black Vice-chancellor of a South African university, Fort Hare University. Sibusiso became Minister of Education in 1999 and sent to Germany to become South Africa's ambassador.

He is married to Funeka and has four daughters and one son.