A Labour Court judgement has found that former V&A Waterfront chief information officer (CIO) Sibongiseni Thotsejane concealed business ties to consultants who cost the company R1.87 million.
In a case dating back almost a decade, the Cape Town Labour Court found that the former Victoria and Alfred (V&A) Waterfront CIO fraudulently secured her appointment and concealed business ties to two IT consultants.
Thotsejane represented herself for much of the trial after her attorneys withdrew in 2022, and repeatedly failed to appear in court, at one point initially denying she was the respondent after changing her surname.
The case had already progressed slowly since action was instituted in 2018, but her conduct from 2022 onwards saw it postponed and re-enrolled multiple times.
The V&A Waterfront, set inside a 123-hectare working harbour with Table Mountain as its backdrop, is one of South Africa’s most visited destinations, home to the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa and the Two Oceans Aquarium. It is jointly owned by Growthpoint Properties and the Government Employees Pension Fund, via the Public Investment Corporation.
V&A employed Thotsejane as its CIO in the finance and central services department on 12 October 2015 and, just more than a year later, she was summarily dismissed for misconduct following a disciplinary enquiry.
The court found that Thotsejane breached the Waterfront’s procurement policies, which required employees to act honestly, maintain arm’s-length relationships and avoid conflicts of interest. She concealed her existing business relationships with two consultants when arranging their appointments through EOH MC Solutions.
EOH was the Waterfront’s outsourced IT provider, responsible for its daily IT operations, including server maintenance and staff connectivity. Thotsejane was responsible for overseeing the company’s broader IT requirements alongside EOH.
The judgment shows she actively promoted Professor Tiko Iyamu’s appointment as senior enterprise architect within a week of the role being drawn up, while Nokubela Mchunu subsequently filled a business analyst position. Iyamu’s services were billed at R1 500 an hour.
Money for nothing
Both consultants had previously undertaken work through Thotsejane’s private company, FlavaLite Innovations, notes Judge Robert Lagrange. However, she did not disclose these relationships to the Waterfront when promoting their appointments through EOH, the ruling states.
“Thotsejane was obviously conflicted in promoting the appointment of individuals who regularly worked with her in her own business, which was completely incompatible with her duty to allow the recruitment process to be conducted independently and objectively in the best interest of V&A,” says the ruling.
Judge Lagrange notes: “What exacerbated the situation was that she did not disclose her connection to persons she was encouraging EOH to engage, thereby concealing from the employer that she was not a disinterested party in the appointment process.”
As a result, the Waterfront paid EOH R1.4 million for Iyamu and R464 000 for Mchunu’s engagement, both excluding VAT. Lagrange states: “The two consultants failed to even render the services they had been engaged to perform.
“But for the respondent’s conduct in getting EOH to employ them both, EOH would not have been receiving reimbursement of their fees or remuneration [from] V&A, and V&A would not have been charged for those services,” Judge Lagrange writes.
No finding
The judgement does not address whether EOH itself was complicit, as the company was not a party to the case. It also records that its then CEO, Chris Lazari, did not testify, although November 2015 e-mail correspondence between him and Thotsejane supported the findings about her role in initiating the appointments.
In 2019, an ENSafrica investigation uncovered governance failures and around R1.2 billion in suspicious transactions at EOH, largely linked to public sector contracts.
The listed company rebranded as iOCO in December 2024, following a restructuring that included selling eight legacy businesses between November 2023 and July 2024. The group reported its first full-year profit since 2019 in October 2025 and, in March this year, announced its first acquisition in eight years.
No services received
The leisure and entertainment venue alleged, among other things, that Thotsejane didn’t perform her duties in terms of her contract, which meant it had paid her R1 million and received nothing in return.
V&A witness Stewart-Roberts testified that Thotsejane “never delivered a single piece of work according to the scope that was given to her in terms of her role and responsibility”.
According to the evidence accepted by the court, Thotsejane failed to deliver the company’s IT strategy, tactical plans and a memorandum on fibre project risks. Her submissions were described as incomplete and copied from academic textbooks, without practical application to the Waterfront’s infrastructure. She also missed IT steering committee meetings.
Thotsejane was found to have misrepresented her employment history, concealing previous dismissals from Engen, Old Mutual and Acceleration eMarketing, as well as her continued employment at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).
The former CIO subsequently used a fabricated CPUT job offer to negotiate the Waterfront’s initial R700 000 annual offer up to R850 000, while continuing to draw a salary from the university.
“Had the applicant known the true version of her prior employment history, it would never have employed her,” the judgement reads.
Thotsejane has described herself on public platforms, under her former surname Tunzelana, as a PhD-holder with more than 20 years in ICT, a Presidential Commission member and the recipient of several industry awards. Her own material also lists her as CIO of FlavaLite Innovations, the company the court found she used to secure Iyamu and Mchunu's appointments.
Thotsejane also hired two Johannesburg companies, Peppermint Source and Enlightened Poppy Network (EPN), ostensibly to produce corporate IT literacy videos.
The judgement records that she received a disguised invoice from EPN containing a R20 000 commission for producing personal YouTube videos under her alias, DJ Sibs. EPN owner Isabella Hawk confirmed to the Waterfront that Thotsejane had demanded the kickback.
Judge Lagrange ordered Thotsejane to pay the Waterfront R1.03 million in damages arising from her fraudulent appointment, together with R1.87 million for the two consultants. She was also ordered to pay interest and the Waterfront’s legal costs on a punitive attorney-and-own-client scale.
Share
