More properties have been frozen in the ongoing investigation into massive corruption at the National Lotteries Commission.
- Luxury homes, a farm and an upmarket car have been frozen as part of the ongoing investigation into lottery corruption.
- The High Court in Pretoria granted the Special Investigating Unit and the Asset Forfeiture Unit permission to freeze the properties, including one owned by the sister of “Tsotsi” actor Terry Pheto.
- The SIU has handed the dockets to the Hawks to investigate for possible prosecution.
- But while the SIU has been acting vigorously against people who misused Lottery funds, there have been few prosecutions by the National Prosecuting Authority.
Two luxury homes, a property in an upmarket estate, a poultry farm and a Hilux SUV, all allegedly bought with funds siphoned from lottery grants, have been frozen by a preservation order granted by the High Court in Pretoria.
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) and the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) were granted the orders after an ex parte (without the other parties present) hearing by Gauteng High Court Judge Aubrey Ledwaba on 24 July 2024. This was only made public on Wednesday.
The SIU, which does not have prosecutorial powers and is only mandated to recover state funds misappropriated through corruption, has handed the dockets of its investigations into all these grants, as well as many others, to the Hawks to investigate.
But while millions in misappropriated properties, cars and other assets have been frozen because of the SIU’s investigations, there is growing frustration at the slow pace of investigations by both the SAPS and the Hawks into the looting of the lottery, and prosecutions by the National Prosecuting Authority, of those involved.
So far only one person has been successfully prosecuted and two men have appeared in court in connection with misappropriated lottery funds.
The latest order has frozen
- a luxury home in Ekurhuleni co-owned by Ngwedzeni Moudy Mudzielwana and Phindile Garish Mudzielwana;
- a property in Sable Hills in Pretoria registered to the Malwandla Siweya Family Trust, represented by trustee Malwandla Solly Siweya;
- a poultry farm in Midvaal registered in the name of Dimakatso Pheto, sister of Tsotsi actor Terry Pheto;
- a house in Louis Trichardt registered to Collin Mukondeleli Tshisimba; and
- a Toyota Hilux registered to Preldon Construction (Pty) Ltd, represented by Pretty Shandukani.
Dodgy borehole grant
Muzielwana’s home was bought using funds from a multimillion-rand grant meant to install 200 boreholes in drought-stricken villages across South Africa.
His newly established non-profit company, Tshikovha Graduate Academy, was granted a R55-million grant by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) in 2016 to install the boreholes. Before the NLC’s funds landed, there was only R46.73 in Tshikovha’s bank account.
Konani Pfunzo Comprehensive Learning Centre, a Limpopo school, with just 46 learners, acted as a conduit for the funds. The grant application was signed by Moudy Mudzielwana and co-signed by Collin Tshisimba, who has been implicated in several other dodgy lottery grants.
Once the lottery money landed, Tshikovha made two deposits, of R4.8-million and R4.5-million, to Redtaq a company related to former NLC chief operating officer Phillemon Letwaba. GroundUp has reported how Redtaq then paid R1-million to a dealership towards a Rolls Royce for former Lottery chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda.
Audit firm SkX Protiviti, which was commissioned by the NLC to investigate the grant, said they had been unable to reconcile how the money was spent as “Konani and Tshikovha failed to provide us with their bank statements and financial records.”
“The beneficiary and his contractor indicated that they were not willing to consult with us,” SkX said in its report, adding that no background checks or the verification of any documents had been done by the NLC.
When SkX investigators visited the borehole sites, they could not locate eight of them using co-ordinates provided by the NLC. Six boreholes had never had pumps fitted and “therefore were not accessible for usage by the public”, while two were installed on private property. The coordinates for one borehole “indicated that it was in a municipal building” while yet another was located on a farm and had been drilled over ten years before the NLC project.
Solly Siweya
Siweya’s house was frozen in connection with a R30-million grant for the South African Sports Association for the Intellectually Impaired (SASA-II), a sports body for intellectually impaired athletes, to host a Bloemfontein event. Soon after the money landed, SASA-II transferred R3.5-million in two payments to Ironbridge Travelling Agency, which is associated with Phillemon Letwaba.
Ironbridge, in turn, transferred R2-million to Ndzhuku Trading, in which Siweya was one of two directors. Ndzhuku then transferred the money to another of its accounts, and then paid R350,000 to transferring attorneys handling the sale of a property registered to the Malwandla Siweya Family Trust, in Sable Hills in Pretoria.
GroundUp has reported on other dodgy lottery grants involving Siweya, including an R80-million grant supposedly to support Durban’s (failed) attempt to host the Commonwealth Games.
He also acted as an intermediary in the purchase of a house in Bryanston by Upbrand Properties, a company closely linked to Letwaba and his brother, Joe. ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula and his wife originally put in a cash offer for R5.6-million on the house, but they withdrew and an identical cash offer was then submitted by Upbrand which bought the house. The minister lived in it briefly before suddenly moving out.
Mbalula and Letwaba were good friends at one stage but then fell out. Letwaba’s wife and brother both claimed in affidavits when the preservation order was contested that R3-million paid towards the purchase of the house in Bryanston was a loan to Mbalula.
Chicken farm
Part of a R23.7-million grant to Nunnovation Africa Foundation to build a “boxing arena” in Storms River was used to buy a chicken farm in Midvaal farm for Dimakatso Terry, the sister of “Tsotsi” actor Moitheri “Terry” Pheto. Nunnovation had no track record in construction.
Pheto’s luxury home in Bryanston, which was bought using lottery funds, was frozen by the SIU and subsequently sold in March last year. The offer to purchase the farm for R850,000 was signed by former NLC board chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda.
Houses on the lottery
A house frozen in Louis Trichardt by the preservation order is one of several owned by Collins Tshisimba and his wife, Fulufhelo Promise Kharivhe, that are subject to preservation orders.
The SIU believes Tshisimba is part of “a syndicate that has been consistently defrauding the NLC” through various non-profit organisations.
The SIU says he was part of a group of people who siphoned off hundreds of millions of rands from lottery grants between 2016 and 2019, money that was meant to uplift poor people and communities.
Hilux
Pretty Shandukani, whose Hilux DC 2.4GD-6 has been frozen, is married to Mashudu Shandukani. His Mshandukani Foundation, as well as his construction company, Mshandukani Holdings, have been identified by the SIU as being used to launder tens of millions of rands misappropriated from lottery grants. The couple’s luxury home and lifestyle have been featured on Top Billing.
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Princess Dove
So I\’m real good friends with this guy named Juan Ted. Now, Juan is a pretty astonishing guy. He can steal ANYTHING he wants to. Literally anything. It could be the shirt off your back, the wallet in your pocket, or I\’m even sure he\’d find a way to steal your house (And your spouse too). So anyway, one day Juan and I are sitting around watching TV, and they announced that the hope diamond will not be on display anymore and is now getting moved to an undisclosed location. So as we hear this, Juan says \”I\’m gonna steal it\”. Now I know how good Juan is at this kind of stuff, so I just tell him good luck and he goes on his way. Eventually he narrows his search down to a small cave in South Africa. When Juan gets there, he doesn\’t see any guards or anything outside the cave, so he just walks in assuming he was wrong about where the diamond was. He wanders around for a while until he sees a long lit hallway with the hope diamond at the end of it. Confident in his abilities, he strolls over to the diamond and picks it up before realizing its a trap! Suddenly, red lights flashed, armed men came running out, sirens went off. You could hear one of the men say under his breath \”We finally caught Juan Ted.\” But Juan, being the best thief in the world, said \”Not quite. On the count of three, I will disappear.\” As the men looked around confused, Juan began to count. \”Uno. Dos.\” And he disappeared without a tres.
Pexxious
A British man on safari walks into a bar far out in the reaches of a game reserve in Southern Africa, he stays at the bar for a while shooting the shit with the bartender and drinking like a fish, he offer to buy the barkeep a round and since no one else is within 2km of their small oasis of liquor the barkeep obliges. The englishman goes off to the bathroom to have a good old go at the porcelain, he\’s back and ready for a few more whiskeys. He\’s just sat down when suddenly in the distance he hears a scream. He looks over his shoulder and dismisses it as nothing, he turns to the barkeep and orders a drink, takes a sip and hears the scream again. He looks at the barkeep who just shrugs it off. A minute or two later he and the barman hear it again and go outside to take a look. They see a lone figure running towards them screaming, he spots them and lets out a cry, RUN!!!!! HE\”S COMING!!!!!
The barkeep and the Englishman both look at the terrified bedraggled sight before them, and try to calm him down, but he\’s completely inconsolable. They give him water and finally manage to get a word out of him but he struggles free from their grasp and run away screaming.
A few minutes later the same thing happens with a whole group of men running in and screaming, he\’s coming, he\’s coming the barkeep grabs hold of one of the men as he tries to sprint past the bar and tries to get information out of him, again no response other than terrified gibberish.
The barkeep and his customer are starting to get worried, they start to pack up before another group of horrified natives run up to the bar most of them flee but one tries to hide behind the bar, the barkeep pulls out a shotgun and points it at the terrified man\’s face, finally managing to coax some words out of him. \”He\’s coming for us, Vernon Koekemoer is coming for us, we have to hide!!! We have to get out of here.\” He gets up and tries to run but the barkeep grabs him, feeling trapped in a panic he grabs the barkeeps shotgun and blows his own head off. The Englishman and the barkeep look at each other starting to really panic now.
They look out of the window and off in the distance they see a tornado coming towards the bar, at the bottom of the tornado they see the hugest beast of a man they have ever seen, as he gets closer they spot that he is riding a rhinocerous and using a crocodile as a riding whip, with each smack of the crocodile across the back of the rhino the louder is screams and the faster it runs, the tornado following it getting ever larger.
The 2 look at each other and start to fortify their position, they\’ve got a gun and they\’re waaay to drunk to run, so they start piling bar stool and tables and anything they can get their hands on to make sure they\’ll be safe when he arrives. They\’re not gonna make it, they can see the man slowing down his rhino, by now the crocodile is nothing but reptile paste on the bruised rump of the half dead rhino, the rhino drops down dead from exhaustion and crashes to the ground right outside the bar the tornado loses it\’s last breath in a cloud of dust as the huge man crashes his way through the make shift barricade and charges up towards the bar where the 2 men have taken shelter, he grabs a bottle of the hardest liquor on the shelf and down the entire litre in 1 gulp, he peers over the bar sobbing and sees the 2 defenders cowering down behind the crates of beer, they look up at the mans\’ face and he stares at them with a look of complete and utter hopelessness, he stares at them for a half second and half screams, half sobs, \”Oh my god what are you still doing here!!! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!! Vernon Koekemoer is coming!!!!\”