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Reports indicate that Minister of Trade and Industry, Rob Davies, received a memorandum during July last year from members of the National Lotteries Board (NLB). The memo detailed a long list of grievances and administrative problems at the NLB.

This memorandum raises serious questions about whether Minister Davies had known about the corruption and administrative chaos at the NLB all along, but chose to do nothing about it.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will submit a series of parliamentary questions to Minister Davies to determine:

Whether the Minister received such a memorandum; and, if so, when;
What the contents of the memorandum are;
Whether the Minister took action to investigate or address the serious accusations that are levelled in the memorandum ; and
Whether the Minister ever discussed the contents of the memorandum with the former CEO of the NLB, Mr Vevek Ram, and the Chairperson of the NLB, Prof Alfred Nevhutanda.

Today’s reports suggest that a long list of accusations were levelled at the NLB management in that memorandum. The most concerning complaints include:

The former CEO benefited financially from certain grants issued by the NLB;
Ten senior members of the NLB were fired because they questioned the seemingly corrupt actions of the former CEO;
The distributing agencies, who are supposed to operate free from political pressure, were forced to report back directly to the Minister of Trade and Industry on their funding decisions.

This memorandum reconfirms what we have known for some time now: that the NLB has been reduced to an ANC slush fund at the expense of ordinary NGOs and charities.

The result of the NLB’s administrative chaos and political interference is that millions of rands worth of state funds have been paid out to ANC-aligned groups such as COSATU and the National Youth Development Agency, while thousands of charities and NGOs have been unable to access funding. And thousands of the poorest South Africans are suffering because of this.

We will ask the necessary Parliamentary questions to get to the bottom of this. And if it becomes clear that the Minister has played an active role in the corruption at the NLB, more serious investigations must follow.