South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba on Sunday apologised to his family that a “video tape containing material of a se_xual nature, meant for our eyes only” had leaked and been used in an attempt to blackmail him.
He stated on Twitter that the video had been “stolen when my communication got illegally intercepted/my phone got hacked in 2016/17.”
Zim Live has seen the 13-second video, which shows Gigaba, with his T-Shirt pulled up, stroking his member. He says on the video: “Mhh, imagine if this was in your mouth, oh baby!”
It is not believed that video was sent to his wife, Nomachule.
A mobile phone screenshot which circulated on social media on Sunday of a conversation between Gigaba and his former mistress, Buhle Mkhize, reveals that the minister desperately pleaded with her to “delete those pictures and videos” and not to upload them to a South African website.
“For old times sake (sic) please do the right thing. Remember all I have done for you. That video and those pictures will destroy me. Please don’t upload them on (website name) please I beg you,” Gigaba purportedly wrote to Mkhize.
The authenticity of the exchange between the two could not be verified, but it fits into the events around a social media spat that erupted between Gigaba’s wife Nomachule and Mkhize in May 2017.
Picture of Buhle Mkhize
It was reported at the time that Nomachule sent Mkhize a message on Instagram, apparently calling Mkhize a prost!tute. “Miss photoshop and a lot of makeup awuve ufake [you are fake]. Go to hell, prost!tute, tell the world, I am not shaken, loser, you have been doing this since last year,” one of the messages reportedly read.
In response, Mkhize appeared to threaten the Gigabas, indicating that she has a recording on tape that could embarrass the minister.
In the undated phone conversation that was circulated on Sunday, Gigaba asks Mkhize to “be the bigger one, do not allow yourself to be agitated by my wife please”, to which she shoots back: “Why must I listen to you now? Where were you when she was attacking me this time?”
Mkhize, from the screenshots seen by Zim Live, never promised not to leak the pictures and video Gigaba was keen to keep a lid on, stating that she would go to sleep and “decide tomorrow when I wake up”.
“N.B: I am not a bitter ex, she is a bitter wife,” she said of Gigaba’s wife. “Your wife should have let me be.”
Gigaba was thrust into the finance post in March last year after former President Jacob Zuma sacked Pravin Gordhan, a move that unnerved investors and roiled markets at the time.
Vuyo Mkhize, a public relations consultant working for Gigaba, confirmed the authenticity of the tweets.
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