Previous Countrywide Lotteries Commission (NLC) board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda questioned the Point out Safety Agency (SSA) in December 2018 to analyze the leaking of files that uncovered lottery corruption.
The NLC’s firm secretary at enough time mentioned media reports she mentioned have been based on “stolen” info in an affidavit with the SSA.
The SSA did look into. It observed the knowledge was not a matter of point out safety and which the “prevalence of alleged corruption and irregularities” gave “sufficient motive” for your media to show it.
A different board and management has since taken about the NLC and So far have taken actions to finish corruption on the establishment.
A Point out Security Agency (SSA) investigation observed that the “prevalence” of alleged corruption and irregularities involving the NLC and its beneficiaries “offered sufficient motive” for publicity via the media.

The probe into meant “info safety breaches and sabotage of NLC operations” was undertaken right after then-NLC board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda wrote for the SSA in December 2018 requesting it to research.

Here is

Nevhutanda’s letter,
an affidavit by now suspended NLC company secretary Nompumelelo Nene supporting the request, and
the security company’s “confidential” conclusions and recommendations.
Nevhutanda requested the SSA to investigate the position of NLC personnel in the alleged leaking of data, and Nene, in her affidavit recognized particular media and stories that she claimed included these leaks.

Within the letter outlining its conclusions, the SSA advised the NLC that when shielding state information and facts was “a authorized very important directed at defending the sovereignty and integrity with the state” this only placed on correctly categorized data.

Even though it did not say so right, the SSA results implied the allegedly leaked information didn't fall into this category.

Substantially, the SSA produced it clear that the necessity to shield point out info “would not avert any individual from blowing the whistle on corruption or irregular or criminal activity”.

The SSA investigation found that the NLC data linked to the alleged breach was “delicate and privileged in nature, but not classified concerning the prescripts of the Minimal Details Safety Expectations (Miss out on)”.

“The leakage on the suitable sensitive official NLC information and facts into the media won't pose a risk to national stability,” the SSA explained, adding the effect of the breaches was reputational.

The SSA report observed “no evidence of a factual and incriminating mother nature towards any of your suspected NLC staff that could be recognized from the knowledge and details interrogated”.

Furthermore, it mentioned that “the prevalence of alleged corruption and irregularities throughout the NLC and at its beneficiaries does provide ample motive to get these kinds of uncovered from the media”.

Conspiracy statements
In 2020, Nevhutanda instructed MPs through a session of Parliament’s trade, field and competition portfolio committee that there was “a conspiracy” wherein information and facts “stolen” with the NLC was sent to the US, wherever he claimed it was being marketed to fund a smear marketing campaign in opposition to the NLC.

He was repeating similar statements he experienced previously manufactured in Parliament, which included ad hominem attacks on GroundUp which reporter but was very careful not to name either.

“I came listed here During this August home final yr and described to honourable customers that specifics of our beneficiaries has long been stolen and set in a single condition in America,” he told MPs.

“We called on the Point out Safety Agency to return investigate the issue simply because we've been receiving reports that our information and facts is creating money for media platforms and journalists,” he claimed. “There has been chat, obviously from one particular resource, 1 media, that spoke Substantially about proactive-funding,” Nevhutanda said (referring to GroundUp), but failed to inform MPs that the SSA investigation had been finished Practically a 12 months previously.

Proactive funding was at the heart in the looting in the lottery. It side-stepped the normal grant process. The NLC could alone establish a task to fund and appoint a non-income organisation to oversee it.

After Nevhutanda to start with advised Parliament in 2018 that he had requested the SSA to analyze the intended breach, the South African Countrywide Editors Forum issued a press release indicating that his remarks reflected “a particularly harmful attitude in which the media is becoming blamed for the NLC’s inherent challenges”.

“In lieu of investigating why hundreds of thousands can not be accounted for, the NLC has instead tried to cast doubt to the integrity of your journalists involved and has asked the SSA to investigate their sources.”

Proactive initiatives manufactured solution
Safety flaws recognized inside the NLC grant funding system through the SSA’s investigation, look to have been employed as an excuse because of the NLC to get rid of all proactive-funded tasks from its central grants program.

“In or about 21 December 2019, the classification of all pro-actively funding tasks was heightened to ‘mystery’ and initiatives have been removed from the grant funding technique and managed manually under the custody of [Tsietsi Maselwa] the NLC’s [then] Deputy Data Place of work, Government Manager Legal so as to safeguard [the] information,” Nene said in her affidavit.

“There was lots of internal dialogue, with many forwards and backwards, about how to proceed to plug the alleged leaks”, a supply, who was in a very senior situation for the NLC at enough time, instructed GroundUp. “Eventually, the decision was taken to remove every one of the proactive initiatives within the technique and limit usage of a handful of people”.

Some in that handful of men and women have been implicated in corruption.

Maselwa, who resigned from your NLC a number of years in the past, has been implicated in corruption involving lottery money. He acquired R4.three-million from lottery resources allotted to build a library and museum sophisticated in Kuruman (see Taung Cultural Songs and Arts Expo) which he employed to construct a home within an upmarket gated enhancement in Pretoria. The residence is one of quite a few paid out for with lottery funds which were frozen after the Asset Forfeiture Unit attained a preservation buy in December 2022.

The politically-connected Nevhutanda, who was appointed as being the NLC board chairperson by former President Jacob Zuma in 2009 and was near to high-ups while in the ANC Management, previous NLC former Commissioner Thabang Mampane, and ex-chief working officer Phillemon Letwaba, have all been implicated during the corruption which overwhelmed the NLC on their observe.

Also implicated are former board customers William Huma, who resigned just after he was confronted with proof of how he experienced profited from corrupt lottery grants, and Muthuhadini Madzivhandila, who may have because died.

Whenever a new administration, including the whole board and executive, took over at the NLC in late 2022 and early 2023, they discovered a “chaotic mess” during the documentation concerning proactive funding, Substantially of which was paper-based mostly. Important files had been lacking. Information held for safekeeping by doc storage business Metrofile were signed out and by no means returned.

The NLC was ready to Recuperate copies of some ผล หวย ลาว paperwork from its Mimecast e-mail archiving system and the laptops of their assistants and support team.

News stories
In his 1 December 2018 letter, tackled to then SSA Minister Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, Nevhutanda wrote: “The NLC has noted with grave problem probable details protection breaches and the unauthorised use and/or dissemination of confidential details received on account of performing official functions within the Commission by NLC workers. The routines are intended to undermine the integrity from the Fee while disrupting the effective capabilities [on the NLC] and triggering insurmountable reputational harm to the Fee because the custodian of private facts entrusted to it by its beneficiaries.”

His request with the SSA to research was supported within an affidavit by suspended NLC organization secretary, Nomphumelelo Nene.

Nene is now going through a disciplinary inquiry after she was unsuccessful in authorized motion to put aside conclusions of irregular expenditure on her observe.

The goal of her affidavit, Nene reported, was “to document the functions which transpired concerning information security breaches in the National Lotteries Commission”.

She listed numerous news experiences which she claimed were being the effects of those “breaches” (see at the end of this informative article).

Nene stated that a whistle-blower approached the NLC alleging that certainly one of its workforce, Sello Qhino, had “provided her labeled NLC Info and persistently inspired her to provide the knowledge to GroundUp”.

Qhino, who blew the whistle with a series of dodgy lottery-funded initiatives in Kuruman following makes an attempt to boost The difficulty internally had been dismissed, was subsequently fired.

Referring to an eighteen November 2018 posting within the Everyday Dispatch with regards to the misappropriation of Lottery resources, Nene reported which the NLC discovered and then suspended Zintle Rungqu. She was an personnel within the NLC’s East London Office environment, who was the spouse as well as mother of whistleblower Mzukise Makatse’s three little ones.

Rungqu and Makatse think Rungqu was punished due to the fact Makatse blew the whistle. She was suspended and billed internally, with the NLC investing R470,000 on lawyers to symbolize it, but was located not guilty and allowed to return to work.

“The common Think about these article content is that [they contain] labeled data associated with proactive funding projects,” Nene reported in her affidavit.

When Runqu was suspended, Makatse moved out with the loved ones home to go ahead and take warmth off her and his young children. Facing homelessness, he moved into an Office environment in an empty manufacturing facility belonging to a friend.

The two Makatse and Qhino are taking part in an NLC reparation procedure intended to recognise the damage lots of people suffered in the fingers in the NLC. Apologies and, sometimes, money payment are expected.

“Some people were really influenced extremely negatively by this … This is actually agonizing,” NLC Commissioner Jodi Scholtz explained to the Everyday Maverick previous calendar year.

“I achieved two or three these folks. It had been just so heart-wrenching that their entire lives have already been turned upside down,” stated Scholtz.

Among those she achieved ended up Qhino and Makatse.

Risk-free platform wanted for whistleblowers
The SSA located the absence at some time of a correct channel for whistleblowers to report corruption led them to turn on the media.

“Failure to have a focused anti-corruption channel will cause workers presenting this kind of cases outside of the NLC,” the SSA explained in its findings.

“Supplied the magnitude of corruption in state institutions, it stays crucial that it ensures that the NLC complies with all safety prescripts and that its concentration is on guaranteeing that unlawful and irregular carry out is adequately mitigated in opposition to and by making certain an satisfactory channel for whistle-blowers to report untoward conduct without having currently being intimidated.”

It advisable that the NLC build a “Safe and sound channel” for employees to deliver information on any “untoward exercise” that might not stop or discourage employees from blowing the whistle. A whistle-blowers coverage, depending on the Protected Disclosures Act 25 of 2000, is usually a necessity.”

Media experiences Nene detailed
A ten December 2017 report within the Limpopo Mirror about corruption and maladministration involving the Lottery-funded Vhembe Health and Health Centre in Limpopo. GroundUp has labored intently with Anton van Zyl, an investigative reporter and proprietor in the Limpopo Mirror, to reveal NLC corruption. “The short article experienced factors of knowledge not out there in the general public domain, thereby raising issue on interior Details security breaches. The allegations in the media were being independently investigated,” Nene claimed. “Even so, workforce responsible for divulging categorised facts have still for being discovered”;
A 28 January 2018 report posted with the Dally Dispatch “citing a lot of allegations from the Limpopo Mirror write-up published on 10 December 2017 as well as a new allegation regarding a previous personnel via the identify of Mzukisi Makatse. He was billed and summarily dismissed with the danger prompted to the organisation.”
A sixteen November 2018 posting from the Lowvelder about the misappropriation of NLC resources involving a lottery-funded drug rehabilitation centre. GroundUp has described how, in spite of receiving R27-million in lottery grants, the rehab has not been completed. “The Lowvelder short article contained categorized information with regard to NLC policy, elevating further more considerations of inside information safety breaches,” Nene reported in her affidavit. “The prima facie proof with regard to these allegations did not warrant an independent Investigation, nonetheless [it] highlighted the heightened facts stability risks within the NLC.”
A 22 November 2018 GroundUp expose a few dodgy R27.five-million grant to Denzhe Key Treatment, a hijacked NPO. Nene claimed GroundUp experienced confirmed in its story that it had been based on leaked NLC files. This was Regardless of the NLC rejecting a PAIA (Promotion of Usage of Information and facts) request for particulars concerning the challenge, she explained