Thembi Simelane threatens journalists with litigation, legal costs for reporting on her spending

By Pauli van Wyk (Daily Maverick) and Kyle Cowan (News24)

31 Jan 2025

Minister threatens to sue over an investigative series detailing her lavish spending on luxury goods. The series was published in the wake of revelations around a VBS-linked loan used to buy a coffee shop in Sandton.

Cabinet Minister Thembi Simelane has threatened to sue two journalists on “privacy and dignity” grounds after a probe into her lavish lifestyle confirmed her expenses by far eclipsed her income.

Between 2015 and 2020, Simelane spent millions of rands in cash on, among other luxuries, luxury handbags and shoes, a Mercedes-Benz Viano, a family holiday in Disney World, the acquisition of a coffee shop in Sandton and a gated Pretoria property on which she built a multistorey mansion when she was mayor of Polokwane, a Daily Maverick and News24 investigation found.

All on a post-tax salary of around R40,000 per month during this period.

In a lawyer’s letter dated 13 January 2025, Simelane demanded that the journalists “desist” in referring to “personal and private information”, and remove three offending articles, a short documentary and social media posts published in December 2024 and January 2025 which laid out the detail of her questionable wealth.

Daily Maverick and News24 rejected Simelane’s demands.

The origin of Simelane’s wealth remains shrouded in mystery despite several opportunities afforded to her to explain the discrepancies between her declared income and personal expenditure spanning several years.

Read more: Thembi Simelane’s unexplained cash (Part One) — ‘Shopping therapy’, a property bought cash, Disney World trips

Read more: Thembi Simelane’s unexplained cash (Part Two) — The business accounts used to bankroll her lifestyle

Read more: Thembi Simelane’s unexplained cash (Part Three) — The mystery cash used to pay back R849K for VBS-linked loan

Simelane did not complain about a series of articles by the same journalists revealing that she funded a Sandton coffee shop with money that can be directly traced to unlawful, potentially corrupt kickbacks linked to a sprawling scam that eventually sank VBS Mutual Bank. Simelane characterised this R575,600 payment towards her coffee shop as a “legitimate loan” to her company T5 Investments from financial advisory Gundo Wealth Solutions, owned by Limpopo businessman Ralliom Razwinane.

Her explanation created more questions, because Gundo was not registered as a lender and the company was a service provider to Polokwane municipality while Simelane was its mayor, indicating a glaring conflict of interest, which she denied existed. Between 2016 and 2017, Polokwane municipality invested a total of R349-million in VBS Bank, and was able to withdraw its funds without taking a loss before the bank imploded in March 2018.

Razwinane is facing charges of corruption - some relating to the same kickbacks that funded Simelane’s coffee shop - for his part in unlawfully cajoling municipal officials to invest in VBS Mutual Bank while receiving kickbacks from the bank as “commissions”.

Neither did Simelane complain about the journalists’ finding that the “loan agreement” tied to this deal with Gundo appears to have been backdated or faked, putting the document’s validity into question.

President Cyril Ramaphosa moved Simelane from her position of justice minister to minister of human settlements, overseeing a R33-billion budget, on the evening after the first story in the offending investigative articles were published.

In her lawyer’s letter, Simelane complained that certain statements in the articles were “in breach of our client’s rights, as well as other members of her family”.

The offending statements included:

Where she and her family had holidayed in 2019;

Publication of invoices for luxury handbags she had purchased;

Details about her current and ex-husband;

Information from personal and business bank statements, including publishing details of her expenses and bills;

Information on her property purchases and a house she had constructed on the property; and

Information about a Mercedes-Benz Viano vehicle that Simelane purchased and registered in her mother’s name, including details about her mother and her age, and earning capacity.

“Your statements are, in essence, a “lifestyle audit” that you have proceeded to conduct against our client,” Simelane’s letter reads.

“This not only impugns our client’s right to privacy and dignity, but also the similar rights of others who have now been included as additional targets for your stories to amplify the narrative you are developing around our client,” it continues.

The letter also accuses the journalists behind the investigative series and the authors of this report, Pauli van Wyk and Kyle Cowan, of acting unlawfully in contacting former employees who were “personally and/or officially connected” to Simelane to obtain information.

The letter does not specifically identify legislation Simelane perceives to have been contravened, but states that it “illustrates the lengths to which you have and continue to abuse your privileged position as members of the media to even engage in what appears to be unlawful conduct and encouraging others to do the same”.

Simelane’s letter then accused Daily Maverick and News24 of conducting the lifestyle audit to increase viewership and generate traffic for the online websites, and to “usurp the function and duty of various institutions that are looking, or can look, into our clients’ affairs”.

She said the reporters were trying to make her “politically toxic”, which “may precipitate” her “ousting” from Cabinet.

Simelane demanded that information published a month before be removed from the articles and that the journalists desist in making any further statements containing personal or private information, “failing which our client will pursue both non-litigious and/or litigious remedies available to her against you, including but not limited to a complaint to the Press Ombud, a suit regarding the breach of her rights which may or may not include damages claims against you in your personal and professional capacities and both publications, as well as all legal costs…”

On 20 January 2025, News24 and Daily Maverick responded to the letter, rejecting Simelane’s demands and claims.

“The information you claim to be ‘personal and private’ is patently of public interest, given Minister Simelane’s position as a Cabinet minister and member of the National Assembly, the ongoing controversy around her VBS ‘loan’ and her opaque sources of wealth. These remain shrouded in mystery despite several opportunities afforded to her to explain the discrepancies between her declared income and personal expenditure spanning several years. It is a legitimate matter for journalistic inquiry,” the publications’ legal response reads.

“Your accusations of abuse, ulterior motives and usurpation of law enforcement functions are not only false, but reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the role and function of the media in a democratic dispensation,” it adds.

In the wake of Daily Maverick and News24’s months-long investigation, the Hawks conducted a search and seizure of documents on Simelane’s former employee and office at Polokwane municipality, the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development called Simelane to Parliament to explain her coffee shop “loan” and the Public Protector opened an investigation triggered by a complaint from ActionSA MP Athol Trollip.

Simelane and Razwinane, as well as other Polokwane officials, are still under investigation by the Hawks for these and other transactions. Part of Simelane’s defence to the revelations has been to accuse the banking industry of racism, saying that it had been hard for her to secure a business loan at the time, which is why she took the loan from Gundo and Razwinane.

The investigations, meanwhile, showed that she already had mortgage bonds from some of the big banks, on top of her having a significant nest egg of money in the years after the purchase of the coffee shop. DM

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