Alpheus Mangale has resigned as an independent non-executive director of Absa Group. The bank told shareholders in a Stock Exchange News Service announcement issued in Johannesburg that the departure was for “personal reasons and future commitments.”
Absa did not link the resignation to events at Seacom, the pan-African fibre operator where Mangale is group chief executive. The timing of the resignation is still hard to separate from that story. Earlier in the week, it was reported that Seacom’s board had placed him on special leave and appointed an independent third party to investigate allegations about how the company was being run.
Chairman Pieter Uys, a Remgro executive that holds about 30 percent of Seacom, called the step “just a precaution” and said “there’s nothing that says he’s guilty of anything.” The board asked the investigator to report within about a month. Chief financial officer Charl Slabbert is interim chief executive. Seacom’s marketing chief had earlier confirmed an extended leave of about three weeks, without saying whether it was a suspension.
The SENS notice is narrower than the surrounding coverage. Issued under the JSE’s equity and debt listings rules, it records only the resignation, the date, the stated reason, and the committees he leaves. He leaves the Group Risk and Capital Management Committee, the Remuneration Committee and the Information Technology Committee.
The board thanked him for his contribution since he joined in July 2023 and wished him well. Enquiries were directed to Nadine Drutman. J.P. Morgan Equities South Africa is lead independent sponsor.
Alpheus Mangale arrived on the Absa board on 1 July 2023, three months after he became Seacom’s group chief executive on 1 April that year. Absa’s own profile described him as a senior executive with more than 25 years across financial services, telecoms, enterprise and technology in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Alpheus Mangale Early Life and Professional Journey
His formal qualifications are a national diploma in computer systems engineering from the Tshwane University of Technology, a postgraduate certificate in management from Henley Business School, and an Advanced Management Programme from Harvard Business School. An Absa bond prospectus listed his birth year as 1976. A 2025 profile he gave to Mining Weekly placed his birth in Soweto and his schooling at Guvhukuvhu Secondary.
That profile sketches a path that runs from the schoolyard to the boardroom. Alpheus Mangale has previously said that his first paid work was selling ice cream and ice blocks to fellow pupils. After graduating he started as a systems engineer writing and testing code in Johannesburg, then moved through product management, solutions consulting and practice management. He spent more than 15 years at Dimension Data, later part of NTT, rising to chief technology officer and chief operating officer.
He was managing director of Cisco South Africa and chief enterprise officer at MTN South Africa. Before Seacom he spent nearly five years at Standard Bank, Absa’s main rival, as group chief information officer and then group chief engineering officer.
The Standard Bank exit is the other public mark on his record. He resigned with immediate effect in June 2022 after a run of system outages, including a major failure on 21 May that year. The bank said that, as the senior executive accountable for the stability of its IT systems, he was leaving so the group could stabilise services. He has not publicly detailed that period. At Seacom he has overseen a business of roughly 500 to 1,000 people that sells digital infrastructure across Africa, and in 2025 the company announced a planned Seacom 2.0 cable system.
Shareholders are left with two documented facts and one open question. The facts are the 8 October departure from Absa and the special leave at Seacom.
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