Edith Mamosebo

Introduction

Edith Mamosebo is a South African educator who served as principal of Sandown High School until her dismissal over financial irregularities and governance failures during her tenure, and who was most recently employed as an institutional development and support officer — a circuit manager — for the Gauteng Department of Education at the time of that dismissal. In an award dated October 28, 2026, arbitrator Gcina Mafani of the Education Labour Relations Council found her dismissal fair and appropriate and dismissed the unfair-dismissal dispute she had referred, closing off her attempt to win her job back. She was found guilty of three of the eight misconduct charges she faced; the arbitrator made no finding of personal enrichment against her.

Background Information

Mamosebo’s case traces to her time as principal of Sandown High School, where an investigation by the Gauteng education department’s special investigating unit produced eight misconduct charges against her. She was found guilty of three. Her dismissal was confirmed on appeal on August 8, 2025, after which she referred an unfair dismissal dispute to the Education Labour Relations Council, the statutory body that arbitrates education-sector employment cases in South Africa. By the time of her dismissal she had moved into a departmental role as an institutional development and support officer, the position the department described as hers when the case concluded.

The school she led was, by the testimony in the arbitration, in severe financial distress during the relevant period. A former bookkeeper, Thanjekwayo Ndabi, told the arbitrator that staff salaries were sometimes delayed, that the situation Mamosebo’s decisions created worsened the crisis, and that the school was eventually placed under departmental administration.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Dismissed; dismissal upheld by an arbitrator. Mamosebo was found guilty of three misconduct charges and dismissed. Her dismissal survived an internal appeal and was upheld as fair and appropriate by an ELRC arbitrator in October 2026. These are employment-law findings, not criminal convictions.

Central to the department’s case was a 60-month solar installation lease Mamosebo signed with Custom Capital Rental Finance on September 27, 2022, valued in the award at approximately R984,630. Mafani found she signed it without the required approval or authority of the school governing body. Departmental investigator Mario Mandlazi testified that monthly payments began at R16,410 in October 2022 and rose to R22,908 by November 2025, and that the school had paid R839,431 by March 31, 2026 — for equipment whose outright purchase price, by Mandlazi’s estimate, was about R219,000. The agreement excluded maintenance and servicing, and the bookkeeper testified the school would never own the equipment.

Mamosebo’s defense was that the solar project was an urgent response to power outages during practical IT and consumer studies examinations — outages that had corrupted the work of eight grade 12 learners and forced them to rewrite their papers — and that the governing body had mandated its finance committee to source a provider after rejecting a generator on noise grounds. She testified she signed in the presence of the governing body’s chairperson and treasurer and understood they would sign too. Mafani found their presence did not establish approval of the final agreement or authority for her to sign it. She conceded under cross-examination that the system ultimately stopped benefiting the school because of grid compatibility problems.

The award also identified 22 transactions during 2022 and 2023 with a stated total of R574,668 for which the required supporting financial documents were unavailable, and a schedule of 13 disputed transactions totaling R124,495 that included payments into the personal accounts of staff members, governing-body members and Mamosebo herself. Mamosebo testified that payments into staff accounts for emergency operational expenses were accepted practice under the school’s 2021 financial policy, and that some payments into her account reimbursed her for school expenses including food for learners. The arbitrator limited the prohibition-based findings to transactions on or after February 1, 2023, when a stricter policy he found binding took effect.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The consequence was the loss of her job twice over: dismissed as principal, then barred from reinstatement when the arbitrator dismissed her referral. “Having considered the evidence presented by both parties, I find that the allegation is substantiated, on the basis that (Mamosebo) has failed to demonstrate that she had authorisation to conclude the solar rental agreement on behalf of the school,” Mafani wrote. He added that the unverified transactions and payments to people other than the intended suppliers supported “the inference that the school’s financial controls and record-keeping were not adequately maintained,” and that her statutory financial responsibilities under the SA Schools Act made the failures a matter of her accountability as principal.

The arbitrator expressly declined to go further: he made no finding of personal enrichment or misappropriation, saying there was insufficient evidence to support such a conclusion, and cautioned that labeling the entire solar contract fruitless and wasteful expenditure would require a clearer assessment of its financial consequences and the benefits the school received. The reporting of the award by TimesLIVE in early November 2026 put the school’s governance failures back in the public eye.

Current Status

Mamosebo’s dismissal stands. The October 28, 2026 award is the final word of the ELRC arbitration process she chose, her application was dismissed in full, and no further appeal of the arbitration outcome was reported. No criminal proceedings arising from the same conduct were reported. She remains a former principal whose dismissal has now been upheld at every level it was tested.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The upheld award converts her dismissal from a contested personnel decision into an arbitrator-confirmed finding that she signed a nearly million-rand commitment without authority and presided over financial record-keeping too disorderly to verify a half-million rand of transactions. For a career educator, that is a disqualifying mark on the record the department relies on for placements of trust, and the account of a school sliding into departmental administration on her watch follows her name in the public record of the case.

For Sandown High School, the case established the price of the governance failure: a school in financial distress with delayed staff salaries, locked into a rental that cost multiples of the equipment’s value, and ultimately placed under departmental administration.

Sources

• TimesLIVE / Sunday Times, “Sandown High: council upholds former principal’s dismissal,” November 3, 2026. source