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South African Lottery’s Embattled Leadership Resigns under a Cloud
Embattled National Lotteries Commission Chief Operations Officer Phillemon Letwaba has resigned with immediate effect, just weeks before he was due to appear before a disciplinary hearing to answer charges of abusing his position to enrich himself and his family, according to investigative news-outlet GroundUp. The board of the NLC is yet to accept Letwaba’s sudden resignation.
Letwaba’s recent resignation comes just days after the sudden resignation of NLC Commissioner Charlotte Thabang Mampane. GroundUp had revealed that her luxury North West golf course home was allegedly paid for from a Lottery grant to build a school in Limpopo.
Letwaba has been at the heart of many GroundUp stories on corruption at the NLC over the past few years, including several Lotteryfunded projects in Kuruman, this one involving a multimillion-rand drug rehabilitation centre in Pretoria, and a R4.8-million grant to a nonprofit where his wife was one of the directors.
Letwaba has previously denied the allegations against him, including in a previous disciplinary hearing. He is also suing GroundUp for defamation. Letwaba, who was suspended for a third time earlier this month, was facing charges in terms of the Lotteries Act, which included receiving financial benefits from recipients of Lottery grants. He was controversially cleared of similar charges when he faced a disciplinary hearing in March. A decision was taken by the new NLC board to charge him again after receiving legal advice that there were problems with the manner in which the hearing was conducted.
Letwaba was originally charged after SIU head Andy Mothibi informed then Commissioner Mampane of evidence of misconduct by Letwaba.
Letwaba, Mothibi said, was guilty of misconduct or breach of trust by accepting financial benefits of around R45-million through multiple entities linked to his family. There was also evidence that Letwaba had been involved in conflicts of interest that contravened the Lotteries Act, he told Mampane.
The new hearing was due to begin earlier this month but was delayed after Letwaba’s lawyer objected to the lawyer appointed to chair the hearing. Letwaba’s contract at the NLC was due to expire at the end of November. Read the original article on GroundUp.
Letwaba’s resignation follows shortly on the heels of NLC Commissioner, Charlotte Mampane, who served ten years as Commissioner - effectively chief executive officer of the NLC. Her first fiveyear contract was extended in September 2017. The NLC has been overwhelmed with corruption over the past few years. GroundUp states it has uncovered hundreds of millions of rands of misspent Lottery funding on Mampane’s watch, and what we have reported is likely the tip of the iceberg. Her resignation comes just over two weeks after we revealed that Lottery funding meant to build a Limpopo school razed by fire during a protest, had been used to pay for her luxury home in a golf estate.
The house, in the upmarket Pecanwood Estate, which abuts Hartebeespoort Dam in North West Province, is registered in the name of a trust in which Mampane and her husband, Samuel, are both trustees. The couple and their two adult children are all beneficiaries of the trust.
Mampane’s house is one of several that GroundUp has revealed was bought with Lottery grants meant to go to fund good causes, especially in rural and marginalised communities. Mampane, who last year earned R4.5-million, went on leave on the same day that the GroundUp story was published.
GroundUp states that it understands that Mampane was to face disciplinary action in connection with the use of Lottery money to purchase her house. It’s unclear what the effect of her sudden resignation will be on this process, says the news outlet.
Thendo Ramagoma, the former deputy of the NLC’s Arts and Culture distributing agency and current legal executive, has been acting as Commissioner since Mampane went on leave two weeks ago.
The purchase of the house is under investigation by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), which has been probing corruption involving Lottery funds ever since President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a proclamation in October 2020 authorising the investigation.
Mampane was recently called in by the SIU to answer questions about the 2016 purchase of the house for R3.6-million. A few weeks afterward GroundUp, which had been investigating the house purchase since receiving a tip-off last year, published its story.
Under Mampane, the NLC’s relationship with Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel, who has oversight of the lottery, has been adversarial and marked with litigation. Communication between the minister and the NLC was largely reduced to writing, often in the form of lawyers’ letters. This is not the first time that Mampane has resigned from a high-powered job. In 2010, she resigned as acting chief operations officer of the SABC, after she was caught on CCTV camera eavesdropping on a board meeting where her performance was being discussed.
It followed the SABC board’s dismal performance before SCOPA (Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts) the previous month. After the SCOPA hearing, Mampane came under pressure to give up her post, but she retained her well-paid job as a group executive in the office of the CEO.
In 2012, she received a “golden handshake” of R4.3-million from the SABC to prematurely terminate her contract. She joined the NLC as Commissioner shortly afterwards. Read the original article on GroundUp. (Articles and info, courtesy GroundUp - edited for length)
