패션 아이콘, 남편, 국가기술기금, 특별수사단 — 음모가 더 진전되다

Rubicon Clothing designer Hangwani Nengovhela left 100 learners in the lurch in a R2.7-million National Skills Fund scandal that has finally caught up with her – but she’s still trying to shift the blame.

In May 2019, a group of young learners from Protea Glen, Soweto, wrote a letter to the Gauteng government. They were part of a government-funded training programme in clothing and textile manufacturing that had gone horribly wrong.

There were problems with accommodation, equipment and stipends that never arrived.

Some said they had been asked to sign attendance registers, in advance, for classes that never took place.

They had been promised a recognised qualification. They had been promised a future in fashion. What they got instead was a locked building and no sign of the qualifications they had been promised by celebrity fashion designer Hangwani Nengovhela.

That letter, along with four sworn affidavits, now sits inside a forensic investigation that was completed in 2022.

Nengovhela, the woman at the centre of it all, owns the high-end fashion brand Rubicon Clothing, as well as a little-known training arm, Rubicon Communications, which was the company that was given a National Skills Fund (NSF) grant in 2018 to train 100 young learners for jobs in the clothing industry.

While learners were left stranded and NSF attempts to recoup the money were ignored, Nengovhela continued to grace the fashion and event circuit.

As a designer, she has dressed ministers and celebrities and showcased her collections at the South African Fashion Week. Rubicon Clothing was also listed as a sponsor of the 2024 SA Style Awards.

Last week, the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) announced that Nengovhela had signed an acknowledgement of debt and agreed to repay the full R2.7-million, plus interest, in monthly instalments of R74,772.

“We wish to express our sincere regret to all affected stakeholders, particularly the learners who had placed their trust in this initiative as a pathway to empowerment and economic participation,” Nengovhela’s husband, Tshamano Nengovhela, told us in a four-page letter this week.

“Despite the challenges in the project, it was rooted in the genuine intention to uplift communities, create opportunities and contribute meaningfully to the country’s socio-economic development.”

Although metadata suggests that the letter was written by Hangwani, Tshamano tried to shift the blame away from his celebrity wife, telling us: “Rubicon Communication, although legally technically owned by Mrs Hangwani Nengovhela (as sole director/ member), is in actual fact run [and] entirely project-managed by her husband, Mr Tshamano Nengovhela. She has no participation in the day-to-day activities of Rubicon Communications as it has been widely suggested.”

But the excuses Tshamano offered don’t tally with the details uncovered by a Nexus Forensic investigation commissioned by the NSF, and instead raise fresh questions about Hangwani’s honesty.

The SIU announcement flows from a broader proclamation signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa in March 2025, authorising the SIU to probe “allegations of serious maladministration, corruption, and improper conduct regarding the National Skills Fund”.

The SIU investigation of Rubicon showed the NSF funds were depleted by 31 December 2018, just less than two months after R2.7-million was paid into the Rubicon Clothing account and before the first learner even arrived.

According to the SIU, the money “was diverted to cover Rubicon’s operational expenses, logistics, machinery purchases, rentals, loan repayments, school fees and personal transfers”.

Meanwhile, the earlier Nexus report (obtained by amaBhungane) and the case study of Rubicon it provides, demonstrate how badly managed the billions held by the NSF have been – and what Nexus investigators found when they went looking.

In April 2017, Nengovhela submitted a proposal to the NSF, looking for money from its rural development programme. The proposal was to train 3,000 learners in clothing and textile manufacturing.

When Nengovhela was interviewed by Top Billing a few months later, her advice to aspiring designers was: “It must be that you know that you are called to do this because not everyone can be a designer.”

The show ended with a promise. Nengovhela, viewers were told, “would be extending her brand into homeware and training new up-and-coming designers”, adding: “They will be lucky apprentices indeed.”

On 12 June 2018, the NSF approved the project at just in excess of R4.1-million. The amount eventually disbursed before the scheme ground to a halt was R2.7-million.

Rubicon Communications was to train 100 learners over a period of 12 months. But before a single learner was enrolled, there was already a problem that none of the NSF officials caught.

Rubicon’s accreditation with the Fibre Processing and Manufacturing Sector Education and Training Authority (FP&M Seta) had lapsed by the time the project was approved.

Accreditation is what ensures that a completed course produces a recognised qualification, one that can actually help someone find work. Without it, the training would be worthless on paper. There is no evidence that the NSF raised this, or that Nengovhela renewed her accreditation or put an alternative in place.

AmaBhungane put this to Nengovhela, but this was one of the issues Tshamano side-stepped in his letter. “In order not to prejudice ourselves at this stage, we will not be responding to any specific allegations or questions in the public domain,” he told us.

A forensic investigation would eventually pull back the curtain.

In 2021, the Department of Higher Education and Training commissioned Nexus Forensic Services to examine 10 NSF projects flagged by the Auditor-General of South Africa. Rubicon Communications was among them.

Before the NSF could release any money, the project had to undergo due diligence, and Nengovhela’s proposal made a striking claim: Wits University had agreed to play an “advisory and networking role”, according to the due diligence report.

Wits does not offer a course in fashion design. No supporting agreement, no correspondence and no confirmation from the university was provided to the NSF.

When Nexus investigators put this to Nengovhela in 2022, she told them: “The Wits University angle did not fly as after due diligence the project management fee was too low to accommodate the personnel as initially planned.”

She added that she had invited a Wits professor, Philip Haupt, to mentor her. “Unfortunately I lost an opportunity to be mentored appropriately and my project could have been a success as the plan was for Wits to assist with the development of an online store which was to grow big and absorb the learners we were training.”

Wits told amaBhungane a different story entirely.

“The university has not had any dealings with Ms Hangwani Nengovhela at Rubicon Communications or Rubicon Clothing on a clothing project, nor has the university played a role in advising or networking within the textile industry with this company,” spokesperson Shirona Patel said. “The university does not specialise in the textile, fashion or clothing industry. […] The university has no idea regarding the offer of any website, marketing or other commitments.”

Patel added that Haupt, the former director of the National Aerospace Centre at Wits, was disturbed to find his name attached to a project of which he had no knowledge.

The only contact Wits could find with Rubicon Communications was a 2018 proposal, submitted to Tshamano, who had connections in the aerospace industry, to fund students in civil aviation and airport management. But this never went further.

Patel added that no one from NSF approached the university to fact-check Nengovhela’s claims.

The Rubicon proposal to the NSF also stated that a company called Energy Clothing had agreed to lease factory space, equipment and machinery to Rubicon for the duration of the training, and that it could employ 500 graduates once training was complete. For NSF officials, who were focused on job creation for unemployed youth, this would have been an attractive proposition.

Yet there is no indication that NSF officials verified this arrangement or asked to see any supporting agreement.

Energy Clothing was voluntarily liquidated on 28 March 2019, barely two months after the project officially began. It is not clear whether Nengovhela knew that Energy Clothing was in trouble or whether she informed the NSF. These are among the questions we sent her that she and Tshamano chose not to answer.

With all NSF-funded projects, companies must open a dedicated bank account for the project so that NSF’s auditors can keep track of how the money is spent. This did not happen. Instead, the NSF transferred the first tranche of R2.7-million into an existing account that already contained funds from Rubicon’s clothing business.

When Nengovhela was asked about this, she told investigators: “We did not receive any guidance on how we should run the finances of the project. It was also the first project we did for NSF. I found it easy to use the clothing bank account as I have always been using it as an active account.”

According to the SIU’s forensic analysis, the funds were swiftly disbursed; R947,000 was spent within two days.

Overall about R290,000 was spent on machines. Tshamano received about R300,000. About R700,000 was used to repay various loans. Nengovhela made cash withdrawals of about R500,000 and paid about R164,000 in school fees, all apparently from funds meant for the training project.

“The misuse of funds meant that the leadership programme never took place, and 100 learners were denied the opportunity to gain critical skills that could have improved their livelihood,” the SIU media statement added.

Tshamano, Rubicon’s project manager, denies that money was misspent: “The suggestion that monies were simply used for other purposes is in actual fact not factually correct. Rubicon Communication purchased training equipment and paid out stipends from February 2019 when the project was kicked off until it was cancelled by the NSF five months later.”

But this claim – that NSF cancelled the project after five months – quickly unravelled.

When Rubicon pitched its project to the NSF, it said that it had access to a factory with 1,000 sewing machines.

What learners found was very different: Rubicon had secured space in a small building in Randburg, which NSF’s due diligence noted could only accommodate 15 to 20 students.

Learners who met with the Nexus investigators in June 2019 told them that the training space was used by other workers who only finished their shift at 2pm, leaving them with very little time for class. On top of this, their facilitator attended classes erratically and only 12 sewing machines were delivered, meaning they had to be shared.

Most troubling was what learners said about the attendance registers. They alleged they were asked to sign registers covering two weeks during which no classes had taken place. By their own estimate, meaningful instruction amounted to no more than four to six weeks across the entire programme, with little theoretical content and, they said, no assessments of any kind.

In June 2019, just four months into the project, Nengovhela wrote to NSF official Maureen Rannyama, informing her that the training programme had to be stopped because there were no training venues.

According to the Nexus report: “Nengovhela disclosed that her landlord had taken legal action over unpaid rent, that the premises had been locked and that equipment and furniture had been seized.”

She would pay back the money, she promised, but needed time.

In February 2020, NSF told Nengovhela that she was officially in breach of their agreement and had 21 days to repay the R2.7-million she had received.

According to the Nexus report, Nengovhela then asked for a “special project extension”. “Nengovhela informed the NSF, among others, that she has approached a funder who is willing to assist in completing the project.”

NSF declined the offer, giving her one last chance to voluntarily return the money.

In Tshamano’s recent letter to amaBhungane he suggested that Rubicon had been distressed about the collapse of the project: “Rubicon Communications acknowledges that in certain respects we have acted unreasonably and we take responsibility for the shortcomings in the execution and completion of the project. We have shown how serious we take the matter by signing an acknowledgment of debt with the SIU and will effectively refund all the monies received, including those monies that were actually used for training resources, training material and stipends for learners.”

What Tshamano doesn’t say is that NSF has spent four years chasing Nengovhela for the money.

In 2022, Nexus investigators recommended that the full payment of about R2.7-million be classified as fruitless and wasteful expenditure, that the funds be recovered and that NSF consider opening a criminal case with the Hawks.

In its 2022/23 annual report, NSF disclosed that the Office of the State Attorney was in the process of appointing an advocate. It also said it would appoint a tracing agent to locate Rubicon’s directors. By 2023/24, the State Attorney’s office was “in the process of initiating a default judgment”.

Then, last year, the Presidency signed the proclamation giving the SIU the go-ahead to investigate the NSF. One of the projects called out by name was Rubicon.

When Nengovhela signed a deal with the SIU in February, agreeing to repay the R2.7-million, she was hoping to keep it out of the news. The SIU’s press release, accompanied by her picture and flashy graphics, caught her off guard.

“We were quite surprised at the SIU press release as we were under the impression that the agreement was confidential,” Tshamano told us.

NSF acting CEO Melissa Erra welcomed the outcome. “The recovery of these funds sends a clear and unequivocal message that public resources allocated for skills development must reach their intended beneficiaries and will be protected at all costs,” she said.

Despite the project’s collapse, Nengovhela’s star has continued to rise. She dressed the Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, for the 2025 and 2026 State of the National Addresses, has become a regular designer exhibited at SA Fashion Week, and spoke on a high-level fashion panel at the Africa Fashion and Arts Conference in December 2025, an annual continental event celebrating fashion, arts and creative industries across Africa.

Although Nengovhela has now signed an acknowledgement of debt and agreed to pay back the money, this does not mean she won’t be criminally charged.

The NSF told us that it handed over the Nexus report to the Hawks in 2022 and a criminal case was registered. The Hawks were unable to provide us with an update, but the SIU says it will refer its own investigation to the NPA to consider criminal charges.

“The investigation is still ongoing,” the SIU told amaBhungane. “Once finalised, referrals will be made to the National Prosecuting Authority against the company and its directors.” DM

This story was produced by the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism.