Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Parks Tau has named Sizekhaya Holdings, a consortium partly owned by gambling company Goldrush, as the next operator of the National Lottery for the next eight years.
Sizekhaya is led by KwaZulu-Natal businessmen Moses Tembe and Sandile Zungu, the owner of AmaZulu Football Club.
Last week, Judge Sulet Potterill ordered Tau to announce the bidder by May 28 and declared the decision to issue a temporary licence unconstitutional. However, to prevent lottery ticket sales from halting, Potterill suspended the order for five months, allowing a temporary licence to be awarded for that period.
Making the announcement on the court-ordered date, Tau said on Tuesday that he had intended to announce the successful bidder on the same date, provided that licence agreement negotiations were successfully concluded.
However, Tau also further said that he will seek legal advice to appeal the Pretoria High Court’s findings and orders that forced his hand to make this announcement.
“With due respect to the Honourable High Court, my announcement fulfills my undertaking to the bidders and the Court before the hearing of the application. This concludes a long and challenging process of evaluating eight applications for the fourth licence. I appreciate that this has been an enormous and complex endeavour,” he said.
The National Lottery is currently operated by Ithuba Holdings, whose licence expires on May 31. Due to delays in announcing the successful bidder, a temporary licence awarded to Ithuba Lottery, a sister company of Ithuba Holdings, will take effect on June 1. Thereafter, Sizekhaya is expected to assume operations for eight years.
Tau has not clarified the lingering uncertainty regarding when Sizekhaya’s licence will commence, with expectations that Ithuba Holdings will operate for an additional five months until the new operator takes over.
The announcement comes as the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) launched an urgent application to amend a Johannesburg High Court order limiting the temporary licence to five months. The NLC argues that unless the order is revised to allow the temporary licence to remain valid for a full year, lottery sales will cease on Sunday, 1 June, as it would not be financially viable for Ithuba Lottery to continue.
The licence has been the subject of extensive litigation in the Gauteng High Court, initiated by one of the bidders, Wina Njalo. Wina Njalo claimed that Minister Tau favoured Ithuba by delaying the announcement and deciding to issue a temporary licence. They argued that only Ithuba had the infrastructure in place to qualify for the temporary licence.
Ithuba Holdings’ licence was previously extended for two years, making it ineligible under the Lotteries Act to receive another licence. However, a separate entity, Ithuba Lottery, which shares directors with Ithuba Holdings, also bid for the licence.
Sizekhaya’s leading bid has sparked controversy, with parliamentarians from the EFF and Build One South Africa questioning how the bid was awarded.
