The National Lottery Commission has set October 8 to conclude the adjudication of the fourth national lottery licence, which has attracted bids from ANC-linked entities looking to get their hands on the multibillion-rand contract.
“It is also important to record that there are [several] phases to the process: the publication of the request for proposals; the submission of the bids; evaluation of the bids; adjudication and report to the minister; and the minister makes a decision,” the department of trade, industry & competition said.
“Extensive vetting is undertaken independently. There is no disclosure to the board as to who the bidders are. From the moment that the submission of the bid process closes, members of the board are boarded from any semblance of suspicion of bias and so on.”
Business Day reported on Wednesday that many of the shortlisted bidders have links to the ANC, directly or indirectly.
One of the shortlisted bidders is Thebe Investment Corporation, half-owned by Batho Batho Trust, which according to declarations made to the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) has donated R60m to the ANC since 2021. The trust was founded by ANC leaders in 1992.
JSE-listed Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) has also thrown its name in the hat to win the lucrative tender, said to be more than R80bn. HCI is run by trade-unionist-turned-businessman Johnny Copelyn, who was one of the businesspeople who donated to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR17 campaign for the ANC presidency.
HCI is majority owned by the SA Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu), an affiliate of Cosatu, which is in alliance with the ANC.
Businessperson Sandile Zungu’s consortium Goldrush is also in the running to win the licence to operate the national lottery. Zungu in 2022 made a bid to chair the ANC’s biggest province, KwaZulu-Natal, eventually dropping out of the race.
Ithuba, the licence holder, is seeking renewal of the contract, which it was awarded in 2015. Its contract was set to lapse at end-May, but has been extended to May 31 2025 due to delays in initiating the tender process.
Should Ithuba succeed in retaining the licence to operate the national lottery, which generates revenue on behalf of the National Lottery Commission, it would be the first company to do so since the award of the first licence in the late 1990s.
The department of trade, industry & competition would not be drawn on what the commission’s policy on politically exposed people bidding for its tenders is.
“The board is not privy to the names or participants in the bidding process. There is a bid office in place, and the board has a legal advisory service available to it, and the board appoints the committee of experts that serves as the evaluation committee,” it said.
“All participants in this process have undergone a vetting procedure and the board itself is performance managed for any semblance of nonadherence to the request for proposals. For those reasons, the board is not privy to any names of bidders bar what is publicly available in the media. If there had been the vetting process they would have cited them as such.”
Build One SA leader Mmusi Maimane and Corruption Watch have called for a transparent process, with the former saying there is risk of bias as an ANC minister, Park Tau, will have the ultimate say on a tender involving some of his party’s donors.
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