Staff member talks of bully Boateng

The row surrounding Janet Boateng, wife of Paul Boateng (both pictured), the British High Commissioner in South Africa, intensified at the weekend. As reported here, Janet Boateng has been accused of verbally bullying members of her domestic staff. Now a former employee has spoken out about the horrors of working for the erstwhile Labour councillor.

William Fenyane, who worked as the estate manager at the High Commissioner's sumptuous nine-bedroom residence in Cape Town until the regime became too much for him, told the Mail on Sunday that Janet Boateng would routinely describe her South African employees as "lazy" and insisted that they refer to her as "madam", a style of address used during the old colonial days.

When Paul Boateng, former Labour minister and the first black man ever to be HC in South Africa, was appointed, the staff at the Commissioner's residence had been optimistic. They were seriously mistaken. "Madam would push you until you wanted to leave," said Fenyane. "She wouldn't sack you, she would make it intolerable to stay. When I went home to Pretoria to be with my wife and children, I couldn't talk about anything else. I had headaches, I couldn't sleep.

"The day I left, everyone was crying. The Madam had screamed at me in the morning over something and then I had to drive her to the hair salon. I had to stay with her all day while my heart was bleeding over her insults in the morning."

Eight staff, including Fenyane, lived in at the official residence in Cape Town, and a further three at the residence in Pretoria. Several have since left and the bullying allegations are now being investigated by the Foreign Office.