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The Democratic Alliance (DA) strongly supports the call by non-profit organisations for lifestyle audits of National Lotteries Board (NLB) board members and a forensic audit of all grants made in the last three years.

We believe this will provide enough evidence to scrap the Lotteries Board and reconstitute it with a new set of regulations to prevent corruption and power abuse.

The simple truth is that the National Lottery operates more like an ANC slush fund than a means to uplift the poorest and most marginalised members of our society.

As a result of ANC cadre deployment to the Lotteries Board, ANC-aligned groups have received massive grants at record speed. The R1 million grant to COSATU, the R40 million grant to the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) and the R51 million grant to a foreign-based NGO which happens to employ the NLB chairperson’s daughter all highlight the power abuse of the NLB.

Meanwhile, thousands of genuine charities have been left stranded without the funding they need to carry out their good work. Since March 2011, roughly 11 500 requests for funding were received by the NLB. Only 5 500 have been processed.

NGOs estimate that as much as R3.5 billion is still being held back by the NLB. This is crippling the ability of NGOs to help South Africans on a sustainable basis.

The time has come to reconfigure the National Lotteries Board. In the coming weeks, the DA will be releasing a comprehensive set of solutions to the problems plaguing the Board.