Raymond Joseph
Millions of rands from recipients of Lottery grants were paid into the private home loan account of former National Lotteries Commission board member William Huma while he was still on the Lottery board.
Besides payments into Huma’s bond, a GroundUp investigation has also uncovered details of further questionable payments.
Two payments of R1 million each into Huma’s personal bank account were from Upbrand Properties, a construction company closely related to suspended NLC chief operating officer Phillemon Letwaba and his close family members. Letwaba also paid R1 million to Huma.
The investigation also uncovered details of a R13 million Lottery grant to a non-profit company, The Samaritan Initiative, meant to uplift women in Marikana, the site of the massacre of striking miners in 2012.
It appears that part of this grant was used to build a state-of-the-art chicken farm on a smallholding owned by a company of which Huma is the sole director.
Huma failed to respond to detailed emailed questions about the money paid to him and about the chicken farm. He also did not respond to a follow-up email and WhatsApp and email referring him to the emailed questions.
NLC spokesperson Ndivhuho Mafela emailed an answer similar to the one he has regularly supplied to GroundUp’s questions since the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) began investigating NLC corruption late in 2020: “The NLC will not be making any comment about grants that were allocated between 2014 and October 2020. The reason for this is that the [president’s] proclamation commission[ed] an investigation of the organisation [that] has set out this time frame as the one that is under this inquiry.”
Huma resigned from the NLC board late last year and is no longer listed as a board member on the NLC’s website.
Mafela said the reasons for the resignation are "between the board and … the Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition.”
Read the full story here:
https://www.groundup.org.za/article/nlc-board-member-received-millions-linked-to-lottery-grants/
