After the Bell: Behind the lottery licence — how elite networks shape government contracts

I imagine you’re as unsurprised as I am that there is already such a fight over the awarding of the contract to run the national lottery. When you consider that winning the contract is virtually a licence to print money, it was always predictable that the lawyers would be licking their lips.

Even so, I was a little taken aback at the important story published by the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism on Monday, 22 June 2025.

It shows how closely linked at least one of our politicians is to people who benefitted from the deal.

As the story explains, one of the shareholders in the Sizekhaya consortium which won the deal is Bellamont Gaming. One of the directors at Bellamont is Khumo Bogatsu, who is the twin sister of Deputy President Paul Mashatle’s wife, Humile Mashatile.

The other director of Bellamont is Moses Tembe, who also appears close to Mashatile.

Prevailing narrative

All of this fits into what is becoming a prevailing narrative among the English-speaking chattering classes — that Mashatile is linked to many businesspeople who win government contracts. And is able to benefit from these relationships.

But it is much more complicated than that. 

For a start, to make this stick, you would have to prove that Department of Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau made this decision in an unfair manner. And to do that, you might need to have proof that Sizekhaya should not have won this fair and square.

It all reminds me of a fun piece of Zimbabwean lottery trivia.

In 2000, the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, actually won a lottery. 

Now, no one could prove that the odds had been stacked in his favour.

But so complete was his control over Zimbabwean society at the time, it would have been weird for there to be no interference.

Now, I can’t prove that Mugabe made this happen. But I can say that the elites in that society just knew that to survive they had to keep him happy.

No doubt you might believe that what has happened here is to the benefit of Mashatile.

Or, you could believe that this is just a coincidence. 

That might not be as strange as it might sound. One of the quirks of our society is that our elite, the people who really make decisions, is relatively small.

And while that happens in other societies too, here there is a dynamic that links people to the ANC.

This is because, in the past, if you were black and ambitious, you probably knew people who were in the ANC. It’s just the way of things.

Apartheid

For example, in the legal field, many people know each other because they worked together during apartheid. In fact, one law firm - Maluleke Seriti Makume Matlala - produced five judges who were sitting on our courts at the same time.

That’s a record that is unlikely to ever be beaten.

This leads to situations where people know each other very well in all sorts of ways.

There was another recent example that may actually show the dangers of this.

Sipho Pityana recently won an important ruling in the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Pretoria based entirely on the relationships between people.

As always in these stories, there is a long and complicated back story.

Sipho Pityana was the only candidate to be chairperson of Absa when he was accused of sexual harassment at AngloGold Ashanti (no finding was made against him). Maria Ramos was a director there at the time.

The head of the Prudential Authority, Kuben Naidoo, then phoned her and the outgoing chairperson of Absa, Wendy Lucas-Bull.

Eventually, the Prudential Authority made it known it would not accept Pityana as the Absa chairperson and, in the end, he was not appointed.

He has told The Money Show that this clearly only happened because the people involved knew each other. And knew each other well. And that he was unfairly treated as a result.

Informal process

For now, the courts have accepted this. That’s because the Prudential Authority should never have followed an informal process in the first place (unfortunately, the authority has not accepted an invitation to provide a right of reply).

Pityana himself is also an example of a family that can produce more than one person who ends up within the elites of our society. His brother Barney Pityana has played many roles … and is currently the chairperson of the National Lotteries Commission (which plays no role in awarding the national lottery licence).

But this kind of small elite, with groups of people who have deep relationships with each other, may well be bad for our society.

It creates situations where someone like Moses Tembe, or even Edwin Sodi, might be able to capitalise on those relationships. And so one government contract leads to another government contract. 

As I say, this happens in other places. But here at least, thanks to investigative groups such as amaBhungane and Scorpio, we all know about it. 

And in this case we are all going to learn a lot more about how the decision to award the national lottery was taken. Because those who lost out have already started a process to possibly review the decision.

Our lawyers are lucky people… DM