Lottery Commits R124-Million to Fight HIV and TB

he National Lotteries Commission has stepped in to help fill the gap left by the withdrawal of US funds in the fight against HIV and TB.

• The National Lotteries Commission is to pay R124-million to organisations fighting HIV and TB.
• This is intended to help fill the gap left by the withdrawal of funds by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
• The money would be spent on programmes and frontline staff in three organisations, Commissioner Jodi Scholtz told MPs.

The National Lotteries Commission (NLC) has committed R124-million to organisations combating HIV and TB, to help fill the gap left by the withdrawal of funding by the United States.

The withdrawal earlier this year of funding by the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) support in South Africa could lead to hundreds of thousands of additional HIV-related deaths and new infections in the next decade, according to a recent estimate.

The decision to make Lottery funding available was revealed by Commissioner Jodi Scholtz on Wednesday when the NLC presented its 2024/2025 annual report to Parliament’s Trade, Industry and Competition portfolio committee.

Besides HIV, the NLC has also prioritised youth development, and food security in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga.

After two years of qualified audits in 2022/23 and 2023/24, with serious problems inherited from the previous administration, the NLC received an unqualified opinion (with findings) in the 2024/25 financial year.

The HIV funding will be broken up into grants of:

“We want the funding to be spent on programmes and frontline staff,” said NLC Commissioner Scholtz.

“One of the concerns with PEPFAR was that funding was spent on high salaries. We prefer to focus on frontline programme staff on the ground doing the work.” Among those who the services paid for by the funds are intended to benefit are sex workers, men who have sex with men and transgender people, who are all at high risk.

“We want to help South Africa to reach the 95/95 goal,” she said. This campaign is a global health initiative adopted by United Nations member states to combat HIV/AIDS.

The aim is for 95% of all people living with HIV to know their status, at least 95% of them to be on sustained antiretroviral treatment, and at least 95% of all people on treatment to successfully suppress the virus in their blood.

Grant fraud

During the presentation, NLC chief audit executive Vincent Jones told MPs that 79 forensic investigations into dodgy Lottery funding in the past had been finalised during the financial year and 28 criminal cases had been registered with SAPS.

The NLC was currently engaged with 487 cases of grant fraud, Jones said. “We have completed 314 investigations, and investigations into 57 are still in progress. Another 116 are still going through our risk prioritisation process.”

The completed files would be handed to the Special Investigating Unit (SIU).

The SIU told Parliament earlier this year that it was currently investigating dodgy grant funding valued at R2-billion, but this could increase as new tip-offs were received.

Concerns were raised about restrictions imposed on the SIU’s ability to investigate procurement corruption in terms of an amendment to a 2020 Presidential Proclamation. The amended proclamation limits the SIU’s investigations to specific cases of procurement that the unit is mandated to investigate.

Jones answered MPs that the NLC has its own forensic panel to which it can outsource investigations. The NLC also had its own team of six investigators who could probe any tips received via its whistleblower hotline, he said.

Jones said one of the areas that would be investigated by the SIU was the appointment by the NLC of a panel of attorneys firms and legal practitioners. Included in this would be work done by law firm Ndebele Lamola Inc.

Some of this work was done while Ronald Lamola, the current Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, was still a partner in the law firm.

GroundUp previously reported how the firm, which earned R19-million in fees from the NLC between 2016 and 2020, bungled a Lottery corruption probe involving former NLC COO Philemon Letwaba.

New chair

The process to appoint a new chair of the NLC board after the current chair, Reverend Barney Pityana, 80, revealed his plan to quit in December, has begun. The position, as well as that of an additional board member, was advertised last month.

Interviews for the chairperson are scheduled for mid-November.

Pityana told MPs that, after consultations with Trade, Industry and Competition. Minister Parks Tau, he had agreed to remain in office until the formal appointment of a new chairperson.

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