Previous Countrywide Lotteries Commission (NLC) board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda questioned the State Safety Company (SSA) in December 2018 to analyze the leaking of files that exposed lottery corruption.
The NLC’s firm secretary at some time listed media studies she explained have been dependant on “stolen” information and facts within an affidavit for your SSA.
The SSA did investigate. It uncovered the knowledge wasn't a subject of state stability and the “prevalence of alleged corruption and irregularities” gave “enough motive” for your media to show it.
A different board and management has since taken in excess of the NLC and Up to now have taken measures to end corruption for the establishment.
A Point out Security Agency (SSA) investigation identified the “prevalence” of alleged corruption and irregularities involving the NLC and its beneficiaries “delivered enough motive” for publicity via the media.
The probe into meant “information and facts stability breaches and sabotage of NLC functions” was undertaken soon after then-NLC board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda wrote to your SSA in December 2018 requesting it to research.
Here is
Nevhutanda’s letter,
an affidavit by currently suspended NLC enterprise secretary Nompumelelo Nene supporting the ask for, and
the security agency’s “private” results and recommendations.
Nevhutanda requested the SSA to investigate the purpose of NLC personnel within the alleged leaking of knowledge, and Nene, in her affidavit discovered certain media and experiences that she claimed concerned these leaks.
From the letter outlining its conclusions, the SSA informed the NLC that even though protecting state details was “a authorized critical directed at preserving the sovereignty and integrity of the point out” this only placed on properly labeled data.
Even though it did not say so directly, the SSA conclusions implied which the allegedly leaked information didn't slide into this classification.
Drastically, the SSA produced it very clear that the necessity to guard condition info “isn't going to avoid any individual from blowing the whistle on corruption or irregular or criminality”.
The SSA investigation uncovered that the NLC facts involved in the alleged breach was “delicate and privileged in character, although not categorised when it comes to the prescripts of your Least Info Safety Criteria (Overlook)”.
“The leakage in the applicable delicate Formal NLC details on the media will not pose a menace to national safety,” the SSA explained, introducing which the affect of your breaches was reputational.
The SSA report observed “no evidence of the factual and incriminating character against any of your suspected NLC personnel that would be recognized from the data and information interrogated”.
Additionally, it said that “the prevalence of alleged corruption and irregularities throughout the NLC and at its beneficiaries does offer sufficient motive to obtain this sort of exposed from the media”.
Conspiracy promises
In 2020, Nevhutanda told MPs in the course of a session of Parliament’s trade, sector and competition portfolio committee that there was “a conspiracy” by which info “stolen” from your NLC was sent into the US, where by he claimed it had been getting sold to fund a smear marketing campaign in opposition to the NLC.
He was repeating comparable promises he had Beforehand created in Parliament, which integrated advertisement hominem assaults on GroundUp and this reporter but was thorough not to call either.
“I arrived here In this particular August house previous 12 months and claimed to honourable members that details about our beneficiaries has long been stolen and set in a single point out in the usa,” he told MPs.
“We known as within the State Security Company to return check into the subject mainly because we're acquiring reports that our information and facts is making funds for media platforms and journalists,” he stated. “There have been discuss, obviously from just one source, just one media, that spoke A lot about proactive-funding,” Nevhutanda claimed (referring to GroundUp), but didn't inform MPs the SSA investigation were done Nearly a yr previously.
Proactive funding was at the center on the looting with the lottery. It facet-stepped the traditional grant system. The NLC could alone detect a project to fund and appoint a non-profit organisation to supervise it.
Just after Nevhutanda to start with instructed Parliament in 2018 that he had questioned the SSA to research the supposed breach, the South African Countrywide Editors Forum issued a press release stating that his remarks mirrored “an especially harmful Mind-set in which the media is remaining blamed to the NLC’s inherent complications”.
“As an alternative to investigating why tens of millions cannot be accounted for, the NLC has alternatively attempted to Solid question over the integrity of your journalists involved and it has questioned the SSA to analyze their resources.”
Proactive initiatives designed solution
Protection flaws determined while in the NLC grant funding program through the SSA’s investigation, surface to happen to be utilized as an justification by the NLC to eliminate all proactive-funded jobs from its central grants procedure.
“In or about 21 December 2019, the classification of all Professional-actively funding assignments was heightened to ‘magic formula’ and jobs were being removed from the grant funding system and managed manually under the custody of [Tsietsi Maselwa] the NLC’s [then] Deputy Information Business office, Executive Supervisor Legal to be able to safeguard [the] information,” Nene explained in her affidavit.
“There was lots of inside discussion, with plenty of back and forth, about what to do to plug the alleged leaks”, a supply, who was inside a senior situation with the NLC at time, told GroundUp. “In the long run, the decision was taken to eliminate each of the proactive initiatives within the procedure and Restrict entry to A few folks”.
Some in that handful of people ended up implicated in corruption.
Maselwa, who resigned through the NLC many many years back, has become implicated in corruption involving lottery funds. He been given R4.3-million from lottery money allotted to create a library and museum intricate in Kuruman (see Taung Cultural Tunes and Arts Expo) which he utilised to build a house within an upmarket gated progress in Pretoria. The house is among numerous compensated for with lottery money which were frozen once the Asset Forfeiture Unit received a preservation order in December 2022.
The politically-related Nevhutanda, who was appointed as being the NLC board chairperson by previous President Jacob Zuma in 2009 and was near to superior-ups within the ANC Management, previous NLC former Commissioner Thabang Mampane, and ex-Main running officer Phillemon Letwaba, have all been implicated while in the corruption which overcome the NLC on their look at.
Also implicated are previous board associates William Huma, who resigned following he was confronted with evidence of how he experienced profited from corrupt lottery grants, and Muthuhadini Madzivhandila, who has since died.
Any time a new administration, such as the complete board and government, took around in the NLC in late 2022 and early 2023, they learned a “chaotic mess” in the documentation referring to proactive funding, Substantially of which was paper-dependent. Vital files were being missing. Files held for safekeeping by doc storage firm Metrofile had been signed out and by no means returned.
The NLC was in a position to recover copies of some ตรวจ หวย files from its Mimecast e mail archiving system and the laptops in their assistants and assist workers.
News stories
In his one December 2018 letter, tackled to then SSA Minister Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, Nevhutanda wrote: “The NLC has mentioned with grave issue attainable info stability breaches as well as the unauthorised use and/or dissemination of private info received as a result of undertaking Formal functions while in the Fee by NLC workforce. The actions are intended to undermine the integrity from the Commission although disrupting the powerful functions [from the NLC] and creating insurmountable reputational harm for the Commission as the custodian of private information and facts entrusted to it by its beneficiaries.”
His request for the SSA to analyze was supported in an affidavit by suspended NLC company secretary, Nomphumelelo Nene.
Nene is currently struggling with a disciplinary inquiry soon after she was unsuccessful in legal motion to set aside results of irregular expenditure on her view.
The goal of her affidavit, Nene explained, was “to history the activities which transpired regarding info protection breaches within the Countrywide Lotteries Fee”.
She detailed many information experiences which she claimed were the outcome of those “breaches” (see at the end of this text).
Nene reported that a whistle-blower approached the NLC alleging that certainly one of its workers, Sello Qhino, experienced “furnished her labeled NLC Data and persistently encouraged her to deliver the knowledge to GroundUp”.
Qhino, who blew the whistle on the number of dodgy lottery-funded tasks in Kuruman after makes an attempt to lift the issue internally were being ignored, was subsequently fired.
Referring to an eighteen November 2018 write-up during the Everyday Dispatch concerning the misappropriation of Lottery resources, Nene stated the NLC discovered and after that suspended Zintle Rungqu. She was an worker inside the NLC’s East London Office environment, who was the lover as well as mom of whistleblower Mzukise Makatse’s 3 young children.
Rungqu and Makatse believe that Rungqu was punished mainly because Makatse blew the whistle. She was suspended and charged internally, With all the NLC investing R470,000 on legal professionals to symbolize it, but was found not guilty and permitted to return to operate.
“The frequent Think about these content articles is usually that [they include] labeled information and facts relating to proactive funding tasks,” Nene explained in her affidavit.
When Runqu was suspended, Makatse moved out with the family house to take the warmth off her and his children. Facing homelessness, he moved into an Workplace within an vacant manufacturing facility belonging to a pal.
Each Makatse and Qhino are taking part in an NLC reparation system meant to recognise the damage a number of people suffered at the palms in the NLC. Apologies and, in some cases, money compensation are predicted.
“Some individuals have been really impacted pretty negatively by this … This is basically distressing,” NLC Commissioner Jodi Scholtz informed the Day-to-day Maverick past year.
“I satisfied several these people today. It absolutely was just so coronary heart-wrenching that their full life have been turned the other way up,” said Scholtz.
Among Those people she fulfilled have been Qhino and Makatse.
Secure System necessary for whistleblowers
The SSA found the absence at enough time of a proper channel for whistleblowers to report corruption led them to turn to the media.
“Failure to have a committed anti-corruption channel will result in personnel presenting such situations beyond the NLC,” the SSA said in its findings.
“Supplied the magnitude of corruption in state institutions, it stays important that it makes certain that the NLC complies with all security prescripts Which its concentrate is on making certain that illegal and irregular carry out is adequately mitigated in opposition to and by making certain an satisfactory channel for whistle-blowers to report untoward carry out devoid of currently being intimidated.”
It advisable that the NLC build a “Safe and sound channel” for employees to provide information on any “untoward exercise” that might not stop or discourage workforce from blowing the whistle. A whistle-blowers policy, dependant on the Guarded Disclosures Act twenty five of 2000, is a necessity.”
Media stories Nene stated
A ten December 2017 report in the Limpopo Mirror about corruption and maladministration involving the Lottery-funded Vhembe Overall health and Physical fitness Centre in Limpopo. GroundUp has worked carefully with Anton van Zyl, an investigative reporter and operator with the Limpopo Mirror, to show NLC corruption. “The post had things of data not offered in the public domain, thereby boosting concern on internal Data protection breaches. The allegations during the media were being independently investigated,” Nene said. “Nonetheless, employees liable for divulging classified information and facts have still for being determined”;
A 28 January 2018 post posted with the Dally Dispatch “citing many allegations within the Limpopo Mirror write-up posted on ten December 2017 and also a new allegation associated with a previous staff from the name of Mzukisi Makatse. He was charged and summarily dismissed with the threat prompted to the organisation.”
A sixteen November 2018 report during the Lowvelder with regard to the misappropriation of NLC money involving a lottery-funded drug rehabilitation centre. GroundUp has noted how, Regardless of acquiring R27-million in lottery grants, the rehab has never been done. “The Lowvelder short article contained categorized info in terms of NLC coverage, boosting more fears of internal facts security breaches,” Nene mentioned in her affidavit. “The prima facie proof with regard to these allegations did not warrant an impartial Investigation, however [it] highlighted the heightened data stability threats within the NLC.”
A 22 November 2018 GroundUp expose about a dodgy R27.five-million grant to Denzhe Main Care, a hijacked NPO. Nene said GroundUp had verified in its story that it was according to leaked NLC documents. This was Regardless of the NLC rejecting a PAIA (Promotion of Usage of Information and facts) ask for for information about the task, she explained