Exclusive investigation - Collen Mashawana Foundation in ‘fraudulent’ signatures scandal over unpaid workers’ salaries

Rendani Makhado (24) lifts a cupped palm to her eyes for a moment’s respite from the harsh Limpopo sun. She frowns, then once more rests her gaze on the document in front of her. 

“No, that is definitely not my signature,” the young mother confirms, this time with a more pointed shake of the head. 

Daily Maverick has come to Rendani’s house in Dididi village, one of several settlements dotted around Thohoyandou’s Nandoni dam.

The document we asked her to inspect is a payment sheet for an employment scheme managed by the Collen Mashawana Foundation (CMF) on behalf of the Independent Development Trust (IDT), a government entity tasked with delivering social development and infrastructure projects. Businessman Collen Mashawana and his charitable foundation featured in Daily Maverick’s explosive recent video sting exposé.

The payment sheet, meanwhile, was meant to unlock critical financial relief for Rendani and her family. But the signature next to her name does not belong to her, nor did she receive the corresponding salary. 

For Rendani and scores more Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) workers from the area, the form now represents only bitter disappointment.

In August 2024, Rendani and some 1,800 other unemployed South Africans across five provinces signed employment contracts with the CMF. The CMF, in turn, had obtained a contract from the IDT to manage the initiative.

Gauteng-based businessman Collen Mashawana and his namesake foundation have been implicated in questionable  business dealings with Malaka and the IDT, as Daily Maverick has previously reported.

During Malaka’s time in charge of the IDT, Mashawana’s foundation was given a R60-million contract to oversee short-term employment projects for Rendani and her fellow EPWP workers. The bulk of these funds were meant to go to the EPWP employees.

Our earlier reporting, however, detailed how the CMF allegedly ripped off hundreds of its workers in the Free State. In the same period, entities linked to Mashawana transferred funds to an upmarket property being built for the IDT’s former boss, raising questions about the source of the money for Malaka’s new house. 

Some of Malaka’s utterances in our covert video suggest that she had hoped to bury these matters by bribing this journalist.

In this latest instalment of our IDT series, we’ll unpack an alleged signatures fraud scam that lies at the heart of the CMF’s EPWP work in Limpopo. It was here, in South Africa’s balmy northernmost province, that Mashawana’s foundation secured its most valuable IDT contract. 

We’ll detail how Rendani’s signature, along with those of hundreds more EPWP workers in the province, were allegedly forged so that the CMF could receive millions of rands in payments from the IDT.

While the fraudulent signatures gave the foundation access to millions of rands from the IDT, the EPWP workers in some months received zero payment for their work. To date, the IDT has transferred more than R27-million to Mashawana’s foundation, with growing indications that the organisation ripped off many, if not most, of its workers.

Our investigation into the alleged signatures fraud is buttressed by experts’ findings. We gave some of the EPWP documents to a forensics firm that specialises in signatures and handwriting fraud. The investigators confirmed that the payment sheets and other paperwork reflected significant and widespread instances of alleged fabrication of signatures in a range of paperwork submitted to the IDT over several months.

A standalone article unpacking the investigators' troubling findings can be read on Daily Maverick’s website. 

Read more: Forensic experts find massive ‘signatures fraud’ in Collen Mashawana Foundation’s IDT documents

Our trip to Limpopo led to another concerning discovery. The core idea behind the government’s EPWP initiative is that participants should work at public facilities and spaces. However, we obtained evidence that Mashawana’s foundation assigned some of the workers to his family’s private properties in Thohoyandou.

We sent detailed queries regarding the alleged forgeries and other issues to Collen Mashawana and to his brother, Austin. As the entity’s chief operating officer, Austin Mashawana essentially runs the foundation founded by his brother.

Collen Mashawana did not respond.

Austin Mashawana was in no mood to entertain our queries either. He claimed that Daily Maverick’s journalist had made intimidating and threatening remarks during an in-person meeting in June. 

“In light of this, I prefer not to engage with you any further.”

Malaka did not respond to requests for comment.

The IDT, now under new leadership, provided a comprehensive response to the matters raised in this article. Crucially, the IDT vowed to initiate an “independent forensic verification process to authenticate all relevant records” referred to in our reporting. The IDT’s full response can be read on Daily Maverick’s website.

'Not our signatures'

In May, our months-long IDT investigation drew us to Thohoyandou and its surrounding villages, located in Limpopo’s Vhembe district municipality. 

We took along some documents that were leaked to us by sources familiar with the IDT’s affairs. These included payment sheets and attendance registers the EPWP workers needed to sign in order to receive their salaries — the very documents the CMF submitted to the IDT for payment. 

The payment sheets contained the EPWP workers’ contact details, so we quickly managed to set up meetings with some of them. 

Our very first encounter with four such workers set the tone for the rest of our visit.

Dembe Booi, Connie Chauke, Itumeleng Makgopye and Khensani Matsimbi all live in the Dididi area near the Nandoni dam’s southern banks.

They had signed up to work for the CMF in August 2024, after which the organisation assigned them to clean schools and clinics in the area. All four of them had to walk great distances each day to get to work and back home again.  

To their dismay, however, their first salaries fell drastically short of the figures promised in their employment contracts. Some of them received only R610, roughly a third of the R1,700 they were supposed to get.

Booi was particularly incensed when we met the group in May.

“Some of us walked ten, fifteen kilometres to work and back. And it was hard, physical work, just for someone to come and take our money,” he fumed. 

When we showed him his signature on a payment sheet for January 2025, Booi gave a wry chuckle.

“That’s not how I sign documents,” said Booi, providing us with a sample signature to make his point.

According to the payment sheet, Booi supposedly received R1,590 for that month’s work.

“We didn’t receive any money in January,” he told us, drawing nods of affirmation from his fellow Dididi locals.

We asked Matsimbi to give us a sample signature too. Even a surface glance revealed that her signature did not match the one the CMF used in order to claim her salary from the IDT.

“I feel so angry and sad. I needed that money for food. We don’t have much work out here, so it has been really, really hard,” said Matsimbi.

No money for food, gas 

For our next engagement we once more had to criss-cross the dusty backroads that connect the Nandoni area’s myriad settlements. 

We finally encountered Lucky Mmbara (50) somewhere on the roadside, his features partly hidden under the brim of his hat. 

Mmbara’s story was particularly heartbreaking.

Before signing up for the Collen Mashawana Foundation’s EPWP initiative, Mmbara had been receiving a monthly social relief of distress (SRD) grant of R350. When the EPWP opportunity came along, Mmbara had to give up the SRD grant.

The idea of a fixed salary, albeit for only a year or two, gave Mmbara much hope. He has to provide for his wife and a child, and any extra income would have been a major boon. 

But his hopes were dashed almost at the very start of the programme. 

“The first salary payments in September and October (2024) were only around R850, not R1,700,” explained Mmbara. 

Then, from November onwards, the payments dried up altogether. 

Still, the Collen Mashawana Foundation was collecting money from the IDT for Mmbara’s work. 

The January 2025 payment sheet clearly shows that the non-profit had claimed R1,690 on Mmbara’s behalf. What’s more, the IDT had gone ahead and processed the claim, along with those of roughly 700 other EPWP workers in Limpopo. 

Financial records in our possession confirm that the IDT in February transferred R1.23-million to the CMF for the previous month’s salaries. 

Like the group we’d met earlier, someone had signed the payment sheet on Mmbara’s behalf.

While giving us his sample signature, Mmbara explained how difficult the ordeal had been for him and his family. 

“We couldn’t buy groceries,” he lamented. 

We also met Mmbara’s wife at their home. 

Although the initial EPWP payments were less than the amounts Mmbara was entitled to, they at least enabled his wife to buy gas so that she could cook their food inside. 

When the payments from Mashawana’s foundation ceased, she had no choice but to start cooking their meals on a fire in their yard.

Public project, private property

By the time we’d circled back to Dididi village for our meeting with Rendani Makhado, we’d collected more samples of EPWP workers’ signatures, all pointing to a case of widespread alleged signatures fraud.

Rendani, meanwhile, also confirmed that her signature had allegedly been falsified. She gave us another bit of information that casts serious doubt over the CMF’s EPWP contract. 

Instead of working at a school, clinic or some other public facility, Makhado’s group of workers were made to clock in at the Villa Dante, a private lodge on the Nandoni dam’s shores. The facility is owned by the Mashawana family. According to posts on social media, the Villa Dante can be rented for short-term stays.

“We mopped floors and swept the yard outside,” explained Rendani.

Seeing as it is a publicly-funded initiative, EPWP workers are not supposed to work at private properties or facilities. 

During our meeting with Austin Mashawana at the CMF’s headquarters in June, the COO emphatically denied that any of its EPWP workers reported for duty at his family’s private facilities. 

At that point in time, we had little to go on apart from the workers’ allegations. Now, however, Daily Maverick can pour cold water on Austin Mashawana’s denials. A series of Whatsapp messages leaked to us clearly indicate that the foundation had tasked some of the workers to do cleaning and other bits of work at the Villa Dante. 

During our visit to Thohoyandou, we also found workers who’d allegedly been asked to work at other Mashawana properties, including a massive residence that is still under construction.

One of the workers at the latter site, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, said they had to move and pack bricks with their bare hands.

“It was very hard work, and I had to walk for about two hours every day just so that I could work.” 

Like all the other workers we’d spoken to, this young Thohoyandou local did not get a cent for the work he’d done in January. 

“I was angry at first. But now I don’t know what I feel. I guess I feel nothing. What can we do?” he said, shrugging as we prepared to leave for our long drive back to Gauteng.

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This investigation was supported with funding from the Henry Nxumalo Foundation, an independent non-profit company that supports investigative journalism in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent.