Sibusiso Emmanuel Vilane

Sibusiso Vilane arrived at the North Pole on Thursday 12 April 2012. This was the final hurdle to becoming the first black person to complete the Three Poles Challenge, having already conquered the South Pole and Mount Everest. It was Sibu’s Goliath Challenge. Thank you Virgin Money for helping Sibu succeed in this achievement!

Sibusiso is one of a handful of South Africans, and the first black African, to achieve the feat of becoming members of the Seven Summits club. The Seven Summits are the seven highest peaks on each of the seven continents.

1. Kilimanjaro (Africa) 1999
2. Everest (Asia) 2003 and 2005
3. Aconcagua (South America) 2006
4. Elbrus (Europe) 2006
5. Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania) 2006
6. Vinson (Antarctica) 2006
7. Denali/McKinley (North America) 2008

On 17 January 2008, Sibu and his Team Extreme partner, Alex Harris, became the first South Africans to walk to the South Pole completely unassisted.

Since 2006, Sibusiso has been the African ambassador for Lifeline Energy (formerly the Free Play Foundation). He dedicated the 1,113 kilometres he trekked to the South Pole, in some of the worst conditions imaginable, to the children of South Africa. In May 2008, as a result of this generous act and hundreds of sponsors supporting Sibu, Lifeline Energy was able to provide 300 Lifeline radios to children from the Nkomazi district, where Sibu was born.

“The future entirely depends on the education of children, their access to information to broaden their thinking and understanding of the ever-changing and challenging world” says Sibu. Sibusiso is also a patron of the Global Offering (GO) projects and is an eco ambassador for Indalo Yethu, a goverment organisation which strives to raise awareness about our environment.

Sibusiso founded a running club called Born to Win. He has also hosted a radio show ‘My Climb, Your Climb’ on 1485 Radio Today in which he interviewed black achievers about the challenges they faced and overcame in their careers and lives. He is patron of the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Conservation Leadership Group and currently shares his time between work at a private game reserve in Limpopo and his family in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga.
Sibusiso has been married to Nomsa since 1995 and is the proud father of four – three girls and a young prince.