Sibongile Mashaba

Sibongile Mashaba

International models are not the only ones who ill-treat their employees.

Here, on our shores, top model Tinyiko Mathusa, 28, is accused of not paying her employee for three months.

Angel Khoza of Kempton Park, Ekurhuleni, who started working for Mathusa five months ago, is crying foul after she was not paid for three months.

Khoza, 23, was paid R4000 every month until in November.

But Mathusa says she is not refusing to pay her.

"I earn dollars and she refuses to accept them," she says.

But Khoza says when she started working for Mathusa as a stock-taker at her clothing stores in Limpopo and Mpumalanga in October last year she treated her well.

She said she travelled all the time from Limpopo to Mpumalanga.

"She was really good to me," Khoza. says. "I do not know what went wrong.

"She paid me without any hassles for two months. After that she started telling me stories. I continued working because I trusted her."

Khoza says when she contacted Mathusa she told her she would pay her.

"She has not even asked me why I stopped working, which shows she does not care," Khoza says.

"All I want is my money. I have been patient all this time and all she ever tells me is that she forgot or that I caught her at a bad time."

The stores sell clothes, shoes, handbags and accessories that cost no less than R120, Khoza says.

But Mathusa says: "I have not been around and when I call her so that we can meet she refuses. She knows that I earn dollars and not rands."

She refuses to give Sowetan the names of her shops because she is "scared people will rob them because they belong to me".

"I do not want people to know that I am a businesswoman," she says.

Mathusa says she has another shop in Mozambique and is planning to open a bar in New York, US. l Supermodel Naomi Campbell, 38, was last year ordered to spend a week mopping floors at a New York City warehouse for hitting her maid with a cellphone.