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 1994 in South Africa for the new democratic government. He introduced the controversial Curriculum 2005 on 24 March1997. Due to many calls for his resignation he was finally released from his post in 1999 and sent to Germany to become South Africa's ambassador.
He is married to Funeka and has four daughters and one son.
