According to the Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS) Midlands-Masvingo Liaison officer, Jere Ruzive Sithole was released last week from the maximum security prison where he had been doing time since 2005.
Sithole had part of his jail sentence suspended due to ‘good behaviour’. He was jailed for four years for competing in female events.
A multiple medal winner, Samukeliso Sithole (real name Ngwenya Mduduzi) was accused by four female athletes and charged with impersonation and causing psychological damage to other colleagues after they discovered that he was masquerading as a female athlete when he was actually a male.
The then 18-year-old won the only gold medal for Zimbabwe at the Southern Region Championships in Botswana in June 2004. He also scooped five gold medals and a bronze in long jump, shot-putt, javelin, high jump and 400m hurdles at a provincial youth championships in Masvingo, while competing as a female.
The Lancashire Steel Athletics Club runner was arrested while waiting for a train with friends in Kwekwe in 2005, shortly after another man busted his disguise.
He later claimed in court that he was born with both male and female genitals but an examination by a government doctor later indicated that he was male.
Six witnesses, including two doctors, told the court that the athlete was not an hermaphrodite, after which he admitted to being a man.
His life of deceit started at Ndhamatuli Secondary School in Silobela in early 2004 when some teachers at the rural institution fraudulently acquired a birth certificate belonging to Samukeliso Sithole, a Form Four pupil at his school, for him to use at competitions.
The scandal left the National Association of Zimbabwe Athletes with egg on their face as ‘she’ was touted to be one of the young talents to emerge from the country.
The athlete claimed in an interview that he had acquired a four-roomed house in Redcliff, which was now fully furnished from the proceeds of her cheating. She also managed to acquire some cattle with the ill-gotten gains-CAJ News.
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