Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a rand.

1970		O. Musi in Post 11 Oct. 2: These people must fork out a thousand maphephas for costs and the cops want their pound of flesh [DSAE].
1981		Voice (Johannesburg) 8 July 2: They won’t listen to any application for a site unless [...] you have at least 6 000 maphepha in the bank [DSAE].

2. money in general.

1978		Voice (Johannesburg) 8 Nov. 2: Bearing in mind that Queen Elizabeth II has a lot of maphepha I frankly don’t see why she shouldn’t [...] fork out income tax [DSAE].
1987		Drum (Johannesburg) Jan. 51: Divorce our speciality. Your maphepha refunded if wifey decides to hang on to you in spite of the fact that she’s lost the divorce action [DSAE].
1990		City Press 17 June 9: That whopping increase in the cops’ maphepha announced last week [DSAE].

3. an official document, ‘papers’.

1985

D. Bikitsha in Sun. Times 15 Sept. 6: Anybody ordinarily or shabbily dressed was a work-seeker who had to have all his papers or ‘maphephas’ (official documents) in order [DSAE].