03/09/2024
🚨 Did You Know 🚨
✍️ Sexwale's nickname of "Tokyo" in derived from his involvement with the sport of karate as a youth.
✍️ Sexwale was born in the townships of Orlando West in Soweto. He father was a clerk at Johannesburg General Hospital and had fought against the Germans in World War ll. Sexwale grew up during the black township's upheaval. In 1973, he graduated from Orlando West High School.
✍️ In the late 1960s, Sexwale became a member of the Steve Biko's Black Consciousness Movement and became a local leader of the radical South African Student's Movement. In the early 1970s he joined the African National Congress's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the nation"). While in Swaziland, he completed a Certificate in Business Studied at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. In 1975, Sexwale went in exile, undergoing military officers training in the Soviet Union, where he specialized in military engineering.
✍️ Sexwale has two children by a first wife and two children by his second wife, Judy van Vuuren, a paralegal he met on Robben Island prison. Following his financial success, he moved into the previously predominantly white suburb of Illovo with his family. In 2023, Sexwale and his second wife file for divorce.
✍️ Three days after the death of Mandela, on 08 December 2013, Sexwale appeared at a prayer service in Houghton South Africa, where he hailed Mandela as the "purest of the purest good" and encouraged everyone to learn from his example: "His method was that of solving a society's most impractical problems through talking and engaging".
✍️ In November 2022, he married Natacha da Silva, a former model 38 years his junior.
✍️ In 2001, Sexwale was accused along with Cyril Ramaphosa and Mathew Phosa of plotting to depose President Thabo Mbeki. Sexwale denied the charges and all three received the backing of Nelson Mandela; they were later exonerated from all accusations.
