Zimbabwean-born South African corporate executive Raymond Sifiso Dabengwa, former telecoms giant MTN Group president and chief executive and Eskom board member, has died.He was 66.
A family member told The NewsHawks:
“Our brother, Sifiso Dabengwa, died this morning of colon cancer in Johannesburg. It’s very sad for the family and all those knew him well. He contributed a lot to the South African corporate landscape and economic development. I can’t say much because it’s too early to discuss these things for now.”
Dabengwa, who was brother to the late prominent Zimbabwean liberation struggle figure and former Zipra intelligence supremo Dumiso Dabengwa, was married to top South African corporate executive Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, currently Naspers South Africa chief executive.
She was co-founder and chief executive officer at Sigma Capital and Shanduka Group boss.
Dabengwa was also close to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, himself a former MTN board chairperson during his years in the corporate world.
Ramaphosa and Dabengwa worked together at MTN.
Ramaphosa is founder of the Shanduka Group where Dabengwa’s wife, Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, also previously worked.
Partly because of his brother Dumiso Dabengwa’s high profile and links to top ANC leaders and liberation figures such as Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma during the struggle, as well as uMkhonto weSizwe commanders, Sifiso Dabengwa had access to high offices in South Africa.
That helped Sifiso Dabengwa to navigate post-apartheid South Africa.
Dumiso Dabengwa was a Zipra commander and was part of the famous 1967 Wankie Campaign in Rhodesia which featured Zipra and MK commanders like Joe Modise and Chris Hani.
Top ANC struggle figures in Lusaka, Zambia, called Dumiso Dabengwa “commander”. His Zipra comrades called him “Black Russian”.
Former South African State Security minister Ayanda Dlodlo, former member of Umkhonto weSizwe guerilla force, attended Dumiso Dabengwa’s funeral at Emanxeleni, Ntabazinduna, outside Bulawayo, in 2019.Born in Zimbabwe on 5 April 1958 and with family in Bulawayo, Dabengwa had moved to South Africa in the late 1970s.
Before going to South Africa, Dabengwa grown up and gone to school in Zimbabwe before he graduated from the University of Zimbabwe with a degree, B.Sc. Electrical Engineering.
He later did an MBA with Wits Business School in Johannesburg.
He also participated in Extended Degree Programmes, established as a mechanism to deal with systemic obstacles to equity and student success.
Prior to moving to South Africa, Dabengwa had spent a few years serving as a trainee at British Rail and eventually Rhodesia Railways (National Railways of Zimbabwe).After that, he joined a South African consulting engineering firm based in Pretoria, where he worked on projects in Botswana, Swaziland (now Eswatini) and the former Bophuthatswana, an apartheid bantustan.
Dabengwa then worked for South African power utility Eskom for many years, where he was to later return as board member in 2018 under Ramaphosa’s government.
He furthered his studies at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, which opened bigger opportunities for him.During his time at Eskom, he was also responsible for the planning and implementation of the national electrification programme, one of the most successful projects of the Reconstruction and Development Plan.He controlled a multibillion-rand budget in a division employing 17 000 people and generating revenues of more than R20 billion a year (about US$2.5 billion at the time).
One of Dabengwa’s most notable and enduring achievements at Eskom was the planning and implementing the national electrification programme which increased electricity in South African households from 35% in 1990 to 84% in 2011.
After Eskom, Dabengwa joined MTN, Africa’s biggest telecoms company, and worked in several positions until he became President and Chief Executive Officer of the company from 31 March 2011 to 9 November 2015. Dabengwa resigned in 2015 after MTN’s Nigerian operation was slapped with a US$5.2 billion fine by regulators as its subsidiary had failed to cut off more than five million unregistered sim cards.The fine was later reduced to US$3.9 billion.
He was a R23.7 million handshake.Dabengwa also sats on many corporate boards, including Impala Platinum Holdings, Dawn Suite Hotel Group, Peermont Global and Gijima Group Limited, among others.
