White widow Samantha Lewthwaite worked at a Johannesburg meat pie company before moving to Kenya

Samantha Lewthwaite, known as the 'white widow', was an IT specialist at a halaal meat pie company on the outskirts of Johannesburg, living and working in predominantly South Asian areas of the city, according to reports that shed light on the Briton's life before she moved to Kenya.

Lewthwaite, who was in possession of a fraudulently obtained South African passport under the alias Natalie Faye Webb, first entered South Africa in July 2008, and travelled in and out of the country on several occasions.

Naledi Pandor, the South African home affairs minister, said that the last recorded use of the passport was in February 2011, before it was cancelled and added to a "stop list".

A report by EyeWitness News said that Lewthwaite worked as an IT specialist at a factory making halaal pies in Lenasia, a former Indian township in the far south-west of Johannesburg. The company's owner reportedly described the mother of three, originally from Aylesbury, as a quiet woman who kept to herself.

He said he was "shocked" to learn of her real identity. Credit records show that Lewthwaite resided in the Mayfair area of Johannesburg, which is home to a large Indian and African Muslim populations, with numerous mosques. She kept a post office box in nearby Brixton, and later leased property in the suburb of Bromhof across town, according to credit documents linked to the identity number listed on the fraudulent passport.

Neighbouring residents of the two addresses could not remember seeing Lewthwaite, and it is unclear for how long she lived there, if at all. Earlier this week, a South African academic claimed that Lewthwaite had been a regular visitor to the country and stayed in Johannesburg's South Asian suburbs.

The credit records reveal that while in South Africa Lewthwaite racked up sizable debts from bank loans, credit cards and clothing store charge accounts. South African clothing store chains Truworths and Ackermans in 2011 wrote off bad debts worth almost R20,000 (pounds 1,250) in total. In 2011, a magistrates' court issued a judgment against Lewthwaite for about R28,000 that was owed to First Rand Bank.

In February 2012, Standard Bank wrote off an amount of nearly R30,000 that she apparently owed on her Mastercard. Pandor said the passport used by Lewthwaite was "fraudulently acquired" using birth registration documents associated with Webb, and had been issued in Durban. How Lewthwaite came to have these birth registration details required further investigation, she said. She would not respond to reports that Lewthwaite had been in possession of multiple South African identity documents, or that one of her children had been travelling on a South African passport under the name Aaron Webb.

A spokesman for the US Embassy in Pretoria wouldn't comment on a report that American officials had questioned Lewthwaite's former employer in Lenasia. "All I can say is, we always cooperate with the host government authorities on national security and terrorism investigations," he said.