Minister Tolashe’s state-funded nanny — and the daughter who took half her salary

When Thandi* heard that she would be appointed by the Department of Social Development to work for Minister Sisisi Tolashe, she could not believe her luck.

Thandi was employed as a “food aide”, and she told Daily Maverick it had been her understanding that she would work at one of Tolashe’s two official residences, situated in Cape Town and Pretoria.

Instead, she would end up working and living at the Minister’s private residence in East London, along with other members of Tolashe’s family.

And there was another unwelcome aspect: she would be required to pay around half her government-funded salary monthly to Tolashe’s daughter, Kanyisa, to contribute towards household expenses.

Both her employment at Tolashe’s private residence at the government’s expense and her mandatory monthly payments to help subsidise the household would appear to be violations of the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) regulations for members of the executive, as laid out in the Ministerial Handbook, as well as possibly the Public Service Act.

Daily Maverick sent questions to Tolashe through Department of Social Development spokesperson Sandy Gondlwana, who confirmed receiving them but was unable to provide a response by the time of publication.

Whatsapps to Kanyisa Tolashe were also not responded to by the time of publication.

A ‘food aide’ far from any official kitchen

According to the Ministerial Handbook, each South African Cabinet Minister is entitled to employ one “food aide” in the Minister’s office at government expense.

“Normally, food aides form part of the staff establishment appointed in the Private Office of the Minister,” DPSA spokesperson Sakhikhaya Dlala told Daily Maverick.

“Food aide”, as a job title, appears to exist only in reference to employees in a Cabinet Minister’s office.

The DPSA has a job category known instead as a “food service aid”, but its own benchmark description of the attendant responsibilities makes it clear in its wording that this is a role designed for an institutional catering context rather than a private household kitchen.

In addition to a food aide, each Minister is entitled to employ one “household aide” per official residence through their department.

The Ministerial Handbook specifies that Ministers may designate a privately owned residence as an official residence, but such a property would have to be situated in their “seat of office”.

Dlala confirmed that a private residence in East London, like Tolashe’s, could never be designated as a Minister’s official residence.

Thandi’s offer of employment, seen by Daily Maverick, made it clear that she was being appointed through the Department of Social Development.

Although the letter makes reference to a “contract”, Thandi is adamant that she never received any documentation beyond the letter, which is unsigned and has no starting date.

“APPOINTMENT ON CONTRACT AS FOOD AIDE TO THE MINISTER OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT RESIDENCE”, it is headlined.

Under “Placement”, it lists “Minister’s Residence” – without specifying whether this is private or official.

There is no explicit provision in the Ministerial Handbook allowing for the appointment of either a food aide or a household aide in a Minister’s private residence at government expense.

It does state, however, that “under exceptional circumstances and where additional tasks or projects are assigned to a member, the Minister for the Public Service and Administration may, upon request by a relevant executive authority, authorise additional appointments”.

It is unclear whether this happened in Thandi’s case, but it is hard to see how someone ostensibly appointed to work in the kitchen of a house in which Tolashe was not even resident might fit that bill.

Thandi’s offer of employment stated that she was being employed in terms of “Section 9 of the Public Service Act” read in conjunction with “Regulation 57 (2) of the Public Service Amendment Regulations 2023”.

Section 9 is the provision that gives an executive authority (eg, a Minister or MEC) the legal power to appoint employees in “his or her department”, which the Act defines as “a national department, a national government component, the Office of a Premier, a provincial department or a provincial government component”. It does not include mention of a private residence.

Regulation 57 (2), meanwhile, is intended for posts to support temporary operational staffing needs within a department. The correct legal basis for the employment of ministerial support staff like food aides is Regulation 66, as the Ministerial Handbook makes clear.

The ‘Minister’s House Allocation’ salary tax

The most unusual part of Thandi’s employment offer comes in the breakdown of her salary.

It tells her she will be remunerated R8,000 per month, with a further R7,670 per month going towards a “Minister’s House Allocation”, with the parenthetical explanation that this amount will be “utilized for household”.

Those figures amount to R15,670 monthly.

The term “Minister’s House Allocation” does not appear to exist anywhere in DPSA documentation, the Ministerial Handbook, the Public Service Regulations, the Public Service Act or any other official public service framework.

Daily Maverick has also studied a number of Thandi’s pay slips.

They include a Personnel and Salary (Persal) code for Thandi, confirming she was being paid from the government payroll, with her employer listed as the Department of Social Development. Her job title was listed as “food service aid”.

The payslips show that Thandi was being paid a net monthly salary of R15,814,47, with no mention of any “Minister’s House Allocation”, and a gross monthly salary of R17,712.73.

The remuneration consisted of a basic monthly salary of R12,929, which is consistent with what the DPSA told Daily Maverick is the standard pay for a Ministerial Food Aide. It was topped up by R4,783.73 monthly, listed as “37% service benefits”: a mechanism used for short-term contract workers without benefits.

In other words, government records would reflect that Thandi was being paid a monthly take-home salary of R15,814,47.

In reality, banking records seen by Daily Maverick show that Thandi was actually only keeping around half of this. The remainder was almost immediately transferred to someone recorded on the bank slips as “Makhanyu”.

The amounts being transferred out differed slightly from time to time – in the bank slip shown below, Thandi paid R8,100 to Makhanyu, which she told Daily Maverick was due to higher-than-normal household expenses for the month. In general, she was transferring R7,000 of her salary each month to Makhanyu.

Makhanyu is a possible term of endearment for the name Kanyisa – Minister Sisisi Tolashe’s daughter’s name.

Thandi was paying the money to Makhanyu’s phone number. She supplied us with a screenshot of her banking app showing the details of the recipient.

The “verified account-holder” is listed as “Dr Tolashe”.

Daily Maverick has confirmed that the cellphone number listed to which the money was sent monthly is registered under the name of Kanyisa Tolashe.

Thandi told Daily Maverick through an interpreter that her employment at Tolashe’s East London residence began three months before she received the official appointment letter, at which point she was told that R7,000 of her monthly salary was owed to “the Minister’s daughter” to cover groceries and household expenses.

Thandi lived in Tolashe’s residence for the period of her employment, and says she shared in the groceries. Kanyisa Tolashe was also living in the house at the time.

Thandi’s primary role appears to have been to look after Minister Tolashe’s three young grandchildren, the children of Tolashe’s son, Nanilethu.

Both Nanilethu and Kanyisa Tolashe were previously featured in Daily Maverick’s reporting for having Chinese SUVs listed in their names despite the fact that these luxury vehicles were allegedly intended as donations for the ANC Women’s League, of which their mother is president.

Although her employment letter stated that she would be employed on a six-month contract, Thandi says in reality she worked in the house for more than a year. She described her working conditions as bad: she says she often clashed with Kanyisa, and claims that she was allowed no days off at all beyond Christmas.

Thandi alleges that at one point, she phoned the HR manager of the Department of Social Development in order to complain about her working conditions, but had the phone put down on her once she revealed where she worked: a claim Daily Maverick has been unable to independently verify.

Kanyisa Tolashe left the East London residence around July 2025, when records show she joined the Public Service Reform programme at thinktank the New South Institute, which is based in Johannesburg.

Thandi says that even after Kanyisa moved to Johannesburg, she was still required to make the monthly payments to her for household expenses. Kanyisa continued to visit often on weekends, and in Thandi’s telling, tensions came to a head, resulting in Thandi’s summary dismissal.

On the DPSA website, which allows you to verify whether someone is employed by the government or not, a search using Thandi’s ID number returns the following result: “Not a public servant.” The DPSA website apparently only reflects and verifies current employees. But she is also not listed on the database of dismissed public servants, however, despite having had a Persal number, which is the data the DPSA tools use.

Public money, private nanny

The picture suggested by our investigation is that Minister Sisisi Tolashe used public money to employ a live-in nanny for her grandchildren at her private residence – and had the employment letter drawn up to ensure that half of that government salary was used to subsidise her family members’ household expenses.

None of this would appear permissible in terms of either the Ministerial Handbook or DPSA regulations.

When asked if half a Minister’s household employee’s salary could lawfully be deducted as a “Minister’s House Allocation”, DPSA spokesperson Dlala replied: “The Guide for Members of the Executive does not allow for deductions on staff members’ salaries”. DM

Additional reporting by Zukiswa Pikoli.

*Thandi’s name and the dates of her employment have been concealed to protect her.