More members of executive implicated in Department of Social Development fallout

Two damning reports tabled before Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Social Development on Wednesday have broadened the accountability reckoning at the Department of Social Development (DSD), raising questions about the conduct of figures beyond the now-removed minister Sisisi Tolashe — including the minister of public service and administration, Mzamo Buthelezi, and the deputy minister of social development, Ganief Hendricks.

The committee has now received the final report of the Public Service Commission (PSC) into the irregular appointment of 22-year-old Lesedi Mabiletja as chief of staff in Tolashe’s office, as well as a report prepared by the forensic law firm Mketsu & Associates that investigated the irregular length of contract given to the department’s former director-general Peter Netshipale.

Both reports were undertaken in the wake of Daily Maverick’s reporting on the governance crisis at the DSD.

Tolashe was removed from office by President Cyril Ramaphosa in May. The department is now led by Acting Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga, who also serves as the minister of women.

The Netshipale contract: ‘Not a clerical error’

As Daily Maverick first reported in September 2025, Netshipale was appointed as director-general on a five-year contract despite the Cabinet having approved only a one-year term, a restriction imposed because Netshipale would reach the mandatory public service retirement age of 65 in 2026.

When the discrepancy became public through Daily Maverick’s reporting, Tolashe told Parliament it was a “clerical error”.

An independent forensic investigation into the issue was subsequently commissioned by the DSD at a cost to taxpayers of R153,000 — only for Tolashe to refuse to cooperate in any way, long before her dismissal by Ramaphosa.

Tolashe’s “total non-cooperation”, the Mketsu & Associates report states, was one of several “systemic roadblocks” that “considerably hindered” the investigation.

But the firm’s director, Sydwell Mketsu, presenting the report to Parliament, made it clear that Tolashe’s parliamentary explanation that Netshipale’s contract was a “clerical error” should be dismissed entirely.

“The investigation completely refutes the former Minister’s defense [sic] that this was an innocent clerical error,” states the report.

This is because the forensic probe has revealed for the first time alleged collusion between officials from the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) and officials from the DSD.

DPSA spokesperson Sakhi Dlala told Daily Maverick that the department would study the report before commenting.

The report found that correspondence from the DPSA revealed a “calculated” attempt to “make [Netshipale’s five-year] contract look regular on paper, in total disregard of the executive approval of the DG’s one-year term”.

The correspondence in question came from Nomsa Khosa, a state administration officer at the DPSA.

In an email to the HR department of the DSD dated 7 May 2025, Khosa “explicitly set out a calculated statutory basis to justify why Mr Netshipale was being placed on a five-year term, actively citing section 8(3) and 16(3) of the Public Service Act as the basis upon which it was ‘possible that a person may be appointed as a HOD beyond the age of 65’.”

Mketsu told the committee that Khosa’s responses were “misplaced” and that the question of whether someone aged 65 can remain in such a post was “long settled” in law.

He acknowledged that his firm lacked the jurisdiction to cross the threshold into the DPSA to forensically audit Khosa’s digital records or interview her directly, but said the inbound documents provided to the DSD were sufficient for the firm’s purposes.

His firm’s report did not speculate on Khosa’s motives, but found that the evidence constituted “sufficient reason to suspect high-level collusion across departmental lines to perpetuate the contract irregularity”.

The report recommends a separate DPSA inquiry.

Minister’s claim ‘unsustainable’

DPSA Minister Buthelezi, an Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) minister in the GNU, is also implicated in the report.

Buthelezi has allegedly claimed no knowledge of how his electronic signature was used to sign off on Netshipale’s five-year contract, denying his own involvement in approving the term.

The report found Buthelezi’s disavowal to be “legally and factually unsustainable” and points out that Buthelezi was present at the Cabinet meeting of 26 March 2025 where Netshipale’s appointment for one year was approved.

“This presence denotes absolute, firsthand executive knowledge of the legal constraints surrounding the post,” the report states.

Mketsu told the committee that he considers Buthelezi’s explanation “contradictory”.

Meanwhile, the DSD’s deputy director-general for corporate support services, Xolile Brukwe, seemed to pour oil on the fire, telling MPs: “That thing of electronic signatures, it’s a lie” — for which he was subsequently rebuked by Acting Minister Chikunga.

“We sent our specialists to [the] Public Service Commission… There’s no way your signature can be forged,” Brukwe insisted.

This was corroborated by the DSD’s IT head, Jabulani Makondo, who told the committee that electronic signatures carry a full audit trail and cannot be used without knowledge unless the password has been given to someone else.

Several committee members questioned whether the Mketsu report’s findings could be relied upon, given that witness interviews were not conducted under oath and DPSA officials were not interviewed. Mketsu acknowledged the non-cooperation as a limitation, but said all oral accounts had been corroborated against documentary evidence.

The deputy minister who knew

The PSC’s final report into the irregular appointment of Mabiletja — a 22-year-old with minimal qualifications who is allegedly the niece of Tolashe’s special adviser, Ngwako Kgatla — found “a serious violation of the Constitutional values and principles by officials of the [DSD], which is deeply concerning and disturbing”.

The report substantiated Daily Maverick’s reporting that Mabiletja was irregularly appointed as Tolashe’s private and appointment secretary and, subsequently, as her chief of staff. It also found that Mabiletja had committed fraud by misrepresenting her qualifications and work history across multiple documents. Mabiletja resigned from the DSD in January 2026.

The PSC also highlighted something previously noted by Daily Maverick in our reporting: the evidence that Deputy Minister Ganief Hendricks, the leader of Al-Jama-ah, was aware that the appointment of Mabiletja was impermissible in law before it was approved.

Both DSD HR practitioner Samuel Boshielo and Tolashe’s former chief of staff Zanele Simmons testified to the PSC that Hendricks was present at a meeting — previously established by Daily Maverick via email records to have taken place on 1 August 2024 — at which it was explicitly flagged that Mabiletja did not meet the requirements for the post.

The PSC report stated: “It is alleged that the DM [deputy minister] attended a meeting during which the issue of Ms Mabiletja not meeting the requirements of the posts was discussed. In this regard, the DM was well aware that Ms Mabiletja does not meet the requirements”.

Problematic HR

The PSC directed that disciplinary action be taken against Boshielo, whom it found had “unduly motivated in the submission for approval to the acting DG that Ms Mabiletja be appointed to the post of Private and Appointment Secretary despite her not meeting the requirements of the post in terms of experience and qualification”.

Boshielo had also featured in the Mketsu investigation, which left several committee members noting with concern the significance of the same HR official appearing in both reports.

This alarm was exacerbated by the adverse findings also made by the PSC against DSD HR head Deven Chinappan, who — like Netshipale — left the public service on 31 March.

Brukwe attempted to defend Boshielo as “just a clerk”, suggesting that he was acting “under duress” — which, as the DA’s Nazley Sharif pointed out, raises further and yet more troubling questions.

Neither the Mketsu report nor the PSC report had the power to directly make recommendations regarding Tolashe, but the PSC concluded that Tolashe “failed to exercise executive oversight” and “abdicated her responsibilities”.

New minister concerned about ‘branding’

Both reports exposed a litany of problems within the DSD, presenting a mountain of challenges for a new acting minister who must divide her time between two separate ministerial portfolios.

Chikunga told the committee that she had accepted the reports and would share information with the DPSA.

She also revealed that one of her priorities would be the “rebranding” of the DSD, citing as an example the work that was done in 2024, while she was minister of transport, to distance Sanral in the public eye from the much-hated e-tolling system.

But it was the committee chair, Bridget Masango, who summed up the shocking scope of what had been heard during the meeting and what remains to be exposed.

Masango said that although what had been presented had scared her, “I am more scared about what I haven’t heard.” DM