Illustrative image | Pelindaba Nuclear Research Centre. (Photo: X) | From left: Necsa CFO Precious Hawadi | Necsa CEO Loyiso Tyabashe. (Photos: Necsa) 
As of Thursday, 4 September 2025, South Africa’s nuclear energy company is without a functioning board after five board members resigned amid a governance crisis its chairperson has described as a “hiccup at the top”.
Daily Maverick can reveal that disciplinary notices and an internal audit show that top executives at South Africa’s state-owned nuclear company, the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa), allegedly misrepresented finances and misallocated millions. They have strongly denied any wrongdoing.
Necsa, at the very moment the government is ramping up its nuclear ambitions, is in the grip of a governance crisis as documents and information seen by Daily Maverick point to allegations of financial misrepresentation, conflicts of interest and self-enrichment by Necsa’s Group CEO, Loyiso Tyabashe, and CFO, Precious Hawadi, who were served with disciplinary notices in August.
Dave Nicholls, chairperson of the Necsa board, explained to Daily Maverick that of Necsa’s nominal seven independent board members, three have resigned. In addition, the Department of Electricity and Energy’s board member, as well as its alternate, have also resigned, bringing the total to five resignations.
By the time of publication, the Department of Energy and Electricity, as well as spokesperson for Minister of Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramakgopa, had not responded to repeated questions from Daily Maverick.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Ethan-NuclearStrategy.jpg "Illustrative Image: Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa (Photo by Gallo Images / Rapport / Deon Raath) | A general view of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station near Melkbos (Photo by Gallo Images / Shaun Roy)")
Board at war
Nicholls said in a call that Necsa needed five board members to be quorate and for the board to be properly formed. At present, this was not the case, meaning that Necsa functionally had no board.
“Last Thursday, we didn’t have a quarterly board meeting and the company secretary said we can’t legally have this meeting because we don’t have a quorum. So we ended up with four people just meeting, and we didn’t have a board meeting,” he said.
“I have been told the minister will do it as soon as tomorrow,” said Nicholls of a possible board appointment, adding that “as of today, we are not quorate as a board”.
Nicholls would not be drawn into sharing substantive details on what prompted the resignations, saying only, “There was a disagreement or there was a dispute between the relationship between the board and the executive, in other words, different views about the executives.”
“The board issued documents which it is not allowed to issue. It is a function of the minister, the board tried to institute proceedings,” said Nicholls of the board, of which he is chair.
“There clearly [were] very significant disputes at the board. What’s sad to me is that we have been recovering well. We have been the model of how to recover well… It’s a pity that something that is an internal debate [has led to this].”
Nicholls touched on what seems to be the key issue: pay increases for top executives.
“The board approved a remuneration framework for the company, and about a year ago, under the same system, a pay progression system. The CEO had the delegated authority and an external HR company reviewed the structure. The CEO adjusted some of the executive salaries and some of the board thought that should have been discussed more [by] the board,” he said.
Read more: SA Nuclear Energy Corporation: We want our fired former CEO as our new paid consultant
Unjustified increases
Much of the consternation revolves around the CEO and CFO.
Allegations revealed in documents that Daily Maverick has seen allege that CEO Tyabashe and CFO Hawadi allegedly misrepresented the company’s financial position to the board to justify salary increases for executives, while other employees received below-inflation pay increases.
The documents show that Hawadi asserted, in an official letter, that the salary adjustments, totalling R1,774,323.15 for 2024/25 and R3,548,646.50 for 2025/26, were funded by savings and budget reductions within the CEO’s cost centre.
However, an independent audit commissioned by the board found this to be false.
The audit concluded that the CEO’s cost centre had overspent by about R1.7-million, and its budget for the following year increased by R6.4-million (24%), directly contradicting the CFO’s claims.
About R5-million in executive salaries was also processed outside the CEO’s cost centre. Management admitted this was a “misallocation” while the audit labelled this an “accounting control failure”.
The internal audit flagged that broader senior management and staff received 3.2% (2024/25) and 4% (2025/26) increases, less than prevailing average inflation, while, by contrast, executives benefited from selective “pay progression” which the audit concluded “disadvantaged the basic needs of employees”.
Suspension, disciplinary notices ‘illegal’
Dr Nikelwa Tengimfene, Necsa’s senior manager of corporate communication, responded to Daily Maverick’s questions on behalf of Tyabashe and Hawadi.
Tengimfene said, “The group CEO of Necsa has delegation to determine salaries of all Necsa employees. This is according to Necsa’s delegation of authority that is approved by the board. Accurate remuneration information was provided to the board to justify executive salary increases.”
Asked by Daily Maverick whether a notice of intended precautionary suspension and a notice of disciplinary hearing were formally issued to Tyabashe in August 2025, she said, “The notices that were issued were not legal as they did not comply with the founding Act of Necsa, the Nuclear Energy Act (Act No. 46 of 1999), as well as governance processes.”
Regarding the internal audit and its findings, Tengimfene said, “The draft internal audit report is in dispute as the process requires auditors to give management a right to respond. This step was skipped as this draft was sent to [the] audit and risk committee as well as the board without the management input containing material inaccuracies.”
She said, when asked whether the audit and risk committee, or any directors, had resigned in recent weeks, that “The appointment and resignation notices of the board are overseen by the minister.”
Tengimfene confirmed that Tyabashe and Hawadi had instituted legal proceedings against the company’s board of directors, saying, “An urgent court interdict was instituted against what was deemed to be illegal notices. Subsequently, the court case was withdrawn when there was concurrence on the illegitimacy of the action.”
Failed suspensions
While Daily Maverick has not yet independently been able to verify that the court case was withdrawn, an affidavit in the case, supported by several board members in opposition to Tyabashe and Hawadi’s application, states that the board approved a decision to issue disciplinary charges on 15 August.
Board member Suren Maharaj, who submitted an affidavit on behalf of himself and three other board members, told the court the board decided to issue disciplinary charges against the two executives and ask them to respond with reasons why they should not be suspended.
He said the board also resolved to write to Minister Ramokgopa to inform him of the developments and seek his “approval that in the event the board is not satisfied with the [Tyabashe’s] submission that [Tyabashe] be suspended”.
“The honourable minister did not respond to the board’s letter dated 18 August 2025. The board therefore was hamstrung by the honourable minister’s failure to respond to the board’s letter and the board could not take steps to suspend [Tyabashe],” said Maharaj.
SA’s nuclear ambitions
According to their website, Necsa is responsible for “processing source material, including uranium enrichment, and cooperating with other institutions, locally and abroad, on nuclear and related matters for the promotion of socioeconomic development in South Africa as well as R&D in the field of nuclear energy and radiation sciences”.
Of late, it has been positioned as a key cog in South Africa’s nascent plans to reset and expand the role and place of nuclear technologies in South Africa, not least the plan to fully domesticate the nuclear fuel cycle in the country.
Perhaps most importantly, apart from its main activities at Pelindaba, near Pretoria, which include operation and utilisation of the Safari-1 research reactor, Necsa also manages and operates the Vaalputs National Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility in the Northern Cape on behalf of the National Radioactive Waste Disposal Institute.
Governance failures, accordingly, threaten national risks of the worst kind in a worst-case scenario.
Read more: Department seeks to ‘reset the role and place of nuclear’, boosts SA regulation budget
This journalist previously reported that, presenting the Department of Energy and Electricity strategy to the parliamentary committee on electricity and energy on Wednesday, 23 April, acting Director-General Subesh Pillay explained that one of the department’s strategic priorities was to “reset the role and place of nuclear”.
The department told MPs that it intended to spend at least 23% of its R20.7-billion budget over the Medium‐Term Expenditure Framework on “Nuclear Energy Regulation and Management”.
This amounts to roughly R1.543-billion for the 2025/2026 period, which is a 41% increase over the previous year.
Speaking to Daily Maverick in a committee meeting room that day, Pillay confirmed that this could be read as the department laying the groundwork for much more activity in the nuclear space. He qualified this by saying that a part of this large jump had to do with developments at Necsa.
“There’s a research reactor (Safari-1), and it’s reached end of life. It’s got about 10 years left, so they’re moving to closing Safari down and simultaneously, we’re now building the next iteration of research generator, and that’s why you had this big jump, because National Treasury has allocated R1.2-billion for that build programme over three years.”
This, Pillay explained, formed the bulk of that jump in spending.
It is this context, against the backdrop of an expensive and complex technical infrastructure project, that makes the allegations against the leadership at Necsa particularly pernicious and corrosive.
This combination of whistleblower accounts, internal audit findings, official charges and mass resignations shows deep fissures in governance at one of South Africa’s most strategically sensitive entities, just as it lays the groundwork for a major infrastructure project, raising urgent questions about oversight, governance and the stewardship of billions in public funds. DM