How Social Development Minister Sisisi Tolashe defied the President

Peter Netshipale’s farewell event was held on 30 March 2026. Netshipale, the Director-General of the Department of Social Development (DSD), is 65 years old, and his one-year contract, approved by the Cabinet on 25 March 2025, had run its course.

By all accounts, the farewell was a cordial affair: the kind of send-off the public service reserves for departing senior officials who leave without scandal.

Yet Netshipale had spent the better part of six months facing disciplinary charges accusing him of gross dishonesty, dereliction of duty and of bringing the department into disrepute through negative media attention.

With Netshipale’s departure, the charges appear to have left with him – their legal validity having been quietly demolished by President Cyril Ramaphosa in a letter sent to Social Development Minister Sisisi Tolashe on 12 March 2026, the authenticity of which Daily Maverick has confirmed.

Signed by President Ramaphosa, the letter lays out the fact that Tolashe had no legal authority to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Netshipale and no legal authority to advertise his position – as the DSD did in January 2026.

Both actions, Ramaphosa wrote, required his delegation of powers under the Public Service Act. Neither had it.

DSD spokesperson Sandy Godlwana, in response to a detailed set of questions from Daily Maverick – including what the outcome of Netshipale’s disciplinary process was, and whether there was any comment on the President’s letter – offered only that “the Director-General’s term concludes in accordance with the fixed-term contract governing the position”.

A contract that grew by four years

The Netshipale affair begins in March 2025, when the Cabinet approved his appointment as Director-General for a period of one year, at an annual remuneration package of R2,259,984 plus a 10% non-pensionable allowance.

The Cabinet minutes were unambiguous on the term of his appointment: one year, subject to qualification verification and security clearance.

Yet somehow, the contract Netshipale ended up signing guaranteed his employment in the post for five years.

When DA MP Alexandra Abrahams posed a parliamentary question about this to Minister Tolashe in April 2025, Tolashe responded that Netshipale’s contract was for five years, running from 2025 to 2030 – directly contradicting the Cabinet decision.

Daily Maverick reported the discrepancy in September 2025, as part of a series on possibly unlawful hiring and firing practices at the DSD under Tolashe – in response to which Tolashe was summoned before Parliament to explain what was going on.

On 6 October, Tolashe duly appeared before Parliament’s social development committee and offered an explanation: Netshipale’s five-year term had been an administrative error, she said; “a clerical error, not an intentional act”, which had been identified by both herself and the Director-General, and already corrected.

“I did not subvert Cabinet’s decision,” she told MPs.

Eight days after Tolashe publicly called the contract discrepancy a shared clerical error, she charged Netshipale with gross dishonesty for signing it.

The charges letter, addressed directly to him and seen by Daily Maverick, stated: “Unbeknown to me, you decided to sign a contract of 5 years”.

Tolashe went on to charge Netshipale with gross dishonesty and bringing the DSD into disrepute.

The co-discoverer of a clerical error had become, in the span of a week after Tolashe’s parliamentary committee appearance, the sole author of a deliberate deception.

A presidential smackdown

Tolashe would proceed to give the go-ahead for Netshipale’s DG position to be advertised in the Public Service Vacancy Circular of 30 January 2026, despite not having the legal authority to do so.

The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) caught wind of it – and emailed Tolashe to caution her. In response, Tolashe doubled down.

In a letter dated 6 February 2026, seen by Daily Maverick, Tolashe wrote directly to DPSA Minister Mzamo Buthelezi, an Inkatha Freedom Party minister in the GNU Cabinet, to defend her position.

Her letter, headed “IRREGUALR [sic] ADVERTISEMENT OF A DG POST”, conceded upfront that “the Minister does not have the power to fill the post of a Director-General but the President together with the Cabinet have that power”.

Tolashe then argued at length, however, that advertising the position was not the same as filling it, and thus required no explicit presidential authority.

“There is therefore no need to withdraw the advertisement and publish an erratum,” she concluded.

President Cyril Ramaphosa clearly felt differently.

Ramaphosa’s letter to Tolashe of 12 March 2026, obtained exclusively by Daily Maverick, amounts to an icily polite smackdown.

Under sections 12(1)(a) and 42A(3) of the Public Service Act, Ramaphosa writes, the President is responsible for all career incidents of directors-general, including their appointment, suspension, and the conduct of disciplinary proceedings against them.

Section 42A(3)(a) authorises the President to delegate these powers to a minister – but that delegation must exist before the minister acts on it.

In Tolashe’s case, that was not the case.

“It came to my attention,” Ramaphosa wrote, “that the Department of Social Development has initiated the process to fill the vacancy of the Director-General, which will arise when the term of office of the Director-General expires at the end of March 2026, by advertising the position, while the Department of Public Service and Administration is still preparing a President Minute delegating to you the power to initiate the process to fill the vacancy.”

Ramaphosa continued: “I have also noted that you have already sent charges to the Director-General without delegation from me to initiate disciplinary steps against the Director-General.”

The President’s warning: “Failure to follow the correct process may lead to procedural flaws which may be challenged.”

When asked to confirm the existence of this letter, Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told Daily Maverick: “That’s correct”.

On the question of whether the President was unhappy that Netshipale might be leaving under an unresolved cloud, given that the disciplinary charges against him lacked authorisation, Magwenya said: “The President’s position has been duly communicated to the Minister”.

The Public Service Commission report Tolashe is sitting on

Running in parallel to this sequence of events, the Public Service Commission in late 2025 launched what it describes as an “own accord investigation” into a range of human resources matters at the DSD – an investigation triggered, sources indicate, by Daily Maverick’s reporting on the appointment of an unqualified 22-year-old as Tolashe’s chief of staff and related hiring irregularities.

PSC spokesperson Zodwa Mtsweni confirmed to Daily Maverick last week that the investigation had been finalised and that a provisional report had been provided to the Minister of Social Development.

That report is understood to be highly critical of Tolashe.

Despite allegedly receiving the report some weeks ago, Tolashe appears to have made no moves to release it.

The embattled minister continues to accumulate scandals.

Last week, Daily Maverick published an investigation revealing that Tolashe appears to have falsely told Parliament that two luxury BAIC Beijing X55 SUVs – allegedly received from Chinese officials, and worth close to R1-million combined – were donated to the ANC Women’s League, of which she is president.

Neither the Women’s League nor the ANC as a whole had any record of the donation. Daily Maverick’s investigation, meanwhile, showed that vehicle registration records trace both SUVs to Tolashe’s adult children. Tolashe did not respond to requests for comment.

ActionSA MP Dereleen James has announced that she will lay criminal charges against Tolashe on Wednesday, 8 April at the Cape Town Central Police Station, citing what James described as “a blatantly deceitful attempt to conceal the luxury vehicles from which she unduly benefited, including the failure to declare two luxury vehicles received from Chinese officials”.

ActionSA also demanded that the President immediately remove Tolashe from the Cabinet, stating that her conduct represented “a clear attempt to mislead Parliament in order to cover up potential criminal conduct, rendering her continued tenure untenable”. DM