R66-Million Lottery Grant for Netball Courts Halted After Investigation

The Special Investigating Unit is probing a grant of R66-million to Netball SA for a 2023 Netball World Cup legacy project.

• Netball SA (NSA) was awarded a R66-million grant by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) to build dozens of all-weather courts across the country as a World Cup 2023 legacy project.
• NSA had asked for between R5-million and R11.9-million, but the NLC paid out R24-million.
• The grant was then frozen after a forensic investigation uncovered serious issues, including shoddy construction and conflicts of interest.
• NSA is considering legal action against the original contractors and consultants who had failed to meet their obligations, and has briefed attorneys.

A R66-million lottery grant for a Netball World Cup 2023 legacy programme to construct dozens of all-weather courts across South Africa has been frozen following a forensic investigation.

Of the total grant, R63-million was allocated by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) to Netball South Africa (NSA) to construct 65 courts across all nine provinces, according to a tender issued by NSA in September 2023. Another R3-million was allocated to “capacity building” for skills development of umpires, coaches and administrators.

The World Cup, the first held in Africa, took place in Cape Town from 28 July to 6 August 2023. The project to build courts in urban and rural areas was intended as a legacy of the World Cup.

Five companies successfully tendered: four to design and construct the courts, and a fifth as the overall national project manager. The amount allocated to these companies was over R57.8-million. The grant also allocated R3-million for marketing and branding.

The total lottery funds allocated to NSA were R66-million, making it one of the largest funded grants in recent years.

However, after paying R3-million in June 2023 for marketing and branding, and R21-million in March 2024 for construction, the NLC halted payment of the next two tranches of R21-million each.

The payments were frozen after an NLC monitoring and evaluation official flagged multiple issues with the NSA funding application and its adjudication, and the NLC launched a forensic investigation.

In response to our questions, the NLC said the investigation found governance and control weaknesses, deviations from standard funding requirements, and deficiencies in the monitoring and oversight of the project.

The investigation confirmed that Netball South Africa initially applied for “approximately R5–R11.9 million for infrastructure and training activities”, the NLC said. In the same application, an additional amount of R6.9-million was requested for the “building of 20 all-weather courts” in four provinces, at a cost of R300,000 a court.

The cost of building a quality all-weather court ranges from R600,000 to R1-million, depending on location, surface, fittings, and fencing, GroundUp was told.

The owner of a leading netball court construction company said it was not possible to build a “decent court” for R300,000. The company, which has been building courts for over 50 years, said its all-weather netball courts cost around R1-million and are built to SABS standards.

“For R300,000, you will get an inferior product that is built with inferior material to save costs,” according to the company, which did not wish to be named or risk being drawn into the controversy with NSA.

“We often see examples of cheaply-built courts where people are awarded tenders or contracts based purely on the lowest prices, which start falling apart in no time at all.”

The final budget of R66-million, approved by the NLC’s Sport and Recreation Distributing Agency committee, was many times the amount originally requested.

Asked if the vastly inflated grant came as a surprise, NSA president Mami Diale said, “Naturally, one would be surprised by that. However, both DSAC (Department of Sports, Art and Culture) and NLC informed Netball South Africa at the time about the reasons for allocating R66-million.”

Diale said after a World Cup is hosted, “there has to be a legacy project”.

She said lawyers had been appointed to ensure that the engineering firm overseeing the project and the construction companies involved would “adhere to their obligations to ensure completion of the project”.

NSA had also sought quotations from other contractors to determine the cost of completing the outstanding sites and would consider legal action against contractors and consultants who had failed to meet their obligations.

“The current board of NSA takes a very serious view of the lack of oversight in respect of this worthy project and is determined to ensure that the project is completed, as originally envisaged,” Diale said.

Alarm raised

Issues flagged in May 2024 by the NLC monitoring and evaluation official included:

• The business plan, budget and motivation were for 20 all-weather courts for four provinces – the Eastern Cape, Free State, North West and Northern Cape – not the other five provinces.
• The amounts requested in the application and in the project business plan, project budget and motivation were different.
• For infrastructure construction, the NSA submitted only one quotation from Mveledzo Sports Facilities (PTY) Ltd, a Bloemfontein-based company, instead of the three quotations which the NLC usually requires.
• No sites for the proposed courts were identified in the original application.

• Proof of ownership or land lease agreements, and other required documentation, was not provided.
• NSA also failed to demonstrate that it had the capacity to implement the project.

The directors of Mveledzo Sports Facilities are Martha Mosoahle-Samm and her husband, Kenneth Claude Samm. Mosoahle-Samm is a former captain of SA’s national netball team, former head coach of the FAST5 national team, a one-time coach of the Free State provincial team, and currently head coach of Botswana’s national team.

Conflict of interest

Diale said only five sites – Ermelo, Tembisa, Winterveld, Hebron Technical School and Lerato Primary School in Phuthaditjhaba – had so far been certified as “practically complete”. The NSA has paid R14.3-million to contractors to date.

The NLC said progress varied across locations. “Some courts were constructed or refurbished, while others were incomplete, delayed, or not handed over. Quality and compliance issues were identified at several sites, and formal handovers remain outstanding in certain instances.”

The investigation also found weaknesses in the identification and management of potential conflicts of interest “relating to service providers”.

Public funding

Besides lottery funding, the government spent R136-million between 2018/19 and 2023/24 financial years to host the Netball World Cup, according to the Department of Sport and Culture’s 2023 National Expenditure vote in Parliament.

The City of Cape Town contributed R6-million, and the Western Cape government R5-million to bid for the event. Each province also contributed R800,000 for the trophy tour.

Years of turmoil

In the years leading up to the World Cup, the NSA was wracked by infighting. In April 2025, the organisation’s president, Cecilia Molokwane, was suspended by World Netball amid longstanding allegations of maladministration. Molokwane revealed she was accused of mistreating NSA staff and board members and of misappropriating millions of rands meant to organise the 2023 Netball World Cup. She has denied all allegations.

In April 2025, NSA was criticised by Parliament’s Sports, Arts and Culture portfolio committee for failing to provide audited financial statements for the World Cup. MPs also questioned large, unexplained expenditures by NSA, including a R119,000 payment to an unknown influencer, over R2-million in consulting fees, and R41,000 for “condolences.”

“It’s an embarrassment and an indictment on us as South Africans,” said committee member Shameemah Salie.

After NSA’s 2023/24 annual report was published, its executives were again closely quizzed by MPs in November 2025 about the post-World Cup “winding up” process, with serious concerns over financial accountability, governance failures, and a lack of transparency.

Millions for wooden floors

The NSA also spent R34.1-million on special wooden competition and training floors for the World Cup, according to a March 2023 response to a written parliamentary question. It is unclear how the floors were funded.

The contract was awarded to Martha Mosoahle-Samm’s company, Mveledzo Sports Facilities.

NSA denies that there was a conflict of interest, as Mosoahle-Samm was not a staff member of the organisation, and says the contract was awarded after a “transparent” tender process. The company with the most experience and capacity was appointed, it said.

Mosoahle-Samm said she was unaware that a quote in her company’s name was included in the NSA lottery funding application.

“It is very important that I clarify that my company was never awarded the contract for all-weather courts – the only one we got was for the wooden floors,” she told GroundUp in response to written questions.

“This is work we got based on merits, expertise and experience,” she said.

“I have served the sport with pride and diligence … because of my love and passion for the game and not expecting to be remunerated.”

© 2026 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.

We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.