Court rules against Lottery: ticket sales may stop on Sunday

The National Lottery may stop selling tickets after Ithuba Holdings’ licence expires on Saturday. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks

• The Lottery may have to stop selling tickets after the licence of Ithuba Holdings expires on 31 May.
• Ithuba Holdings’ sister company — Ithuba Lottery — was supposed to run the lottery under a temporary licence for the next twelve months, but the Gauteng High Court ruled last week that it can only do so for five months.
• The National Lotteries Commission (NLC) then applied for the court to change that order, because otherwise Ithuba Lottery may refuse to accept the temporary licence.
• But the court ruled against the NLC on Friday.

The National Lotteries Commission (NLC) has failed in its bid to change a recent court ruling limiting the temporary licence to operate the lottery to five months.

This means ticket sales may stop before Sunday, 1 June.

The current licence, held by Ithuba Holdings, expires on Saturday. After that, their sister company, Ithuba Lottery, was supposed to take over the licence for a period of twelve months.

But after last week’s Gauteng High Court ruling that the issuing of the temporary licence is unconstitutional and can only be issued for five months, Ithuba Lottery said a five-month licence is financially unfeasible and may not continue operating the lottery after Saturday.

And the new licence holder, Sizekhaya Holdings, which is set to take over from Ithuba Lottery for a period of eight years, will need at least nine months to set up its operations.

The NLC therefore applied to change the court order to allow a twelve-month licence. But Judge Omphemetse Mooki ruled against them on Friday.

A source at the NLC told GroundUp that the board is in emergency meetings to discuss the way forward. If lottery ticket sales do stop after Saturday, the National Lottery Distribution Fund does still have about R4.3-billion in reserves to continue issuing grants to good causes.

The NLC’s application, which was heard urgently on Thursday at the High Court in Pretoria, was opposed by Wina Njalo, one of the companies that bid on the lottery licence tender.

Wina Njalo argued that the NLC was seeking to relitigate the same issues that had already been heard by the court. If it was found that five months was not enough time, it argued, then the NLC could approach the court at that stage.

It said the application to vary the order was yet another example of how the NLC was seeking to favour the Ithuba companies and they were not entitled to insist on making a profit, given that Ithuba Holdings had already made “huge profits” by operating the lottery for the last 10 years.

In his ruling, Judge Mooki said the issue was whether it was just and equitable to extend the period that the temporary licence can operate before it is declared invalid and, in doing so, interfere with the discretion exercised by another court.

Such interference was “very sparingly exercised”.

He said he was not persuaded that the NLC had made out a case.

“There is no substantive support that Ithuba Lottery will suffer a loss of R51-million unless it is granted a temporary licence for 12 months. There was complete silence from Ithuba Lottery. It did not file any affidavits,” the Judge said.

He pointed to the fact that the NLC on 22 May 2025, when it was aware of Judge Potterill’s order, had written to Ithuba Lottery requesting it sign a licence to operate for 12 months.

“It was thus inviting the Ithuba Lottery to sign an agreement that would breach the order made on May 21.”

While the NLC had disclosed the response from Ithuba Lottery, it had not disclosed its own letter.

Judge Mooki said the NLC had also not put up any evidence that Sizekhaya needed more than five months to set up operations.

In fact, as Wina Njalo had pointed out, a condition of the fourth licence was that the successful bidder must be able to operate within five to six months of being awarded the licence.

He said in claiming that its reserves would be significantly depleted should there be no operator after 1 June, the NLC had “over-egged the pudding”.

“I do not accept that the sky will fall after 1 June should Ithuba Lottery refuse to sign an agreement to conduct lottery operations as determined in (Potterill’s) order,” he said.

The request for proposals for the temporary licence was issued when it became apparent that Minister Parks Tau would not meet the strict deadlines to announce the new lottery licence holder, giving it time to take over operations.

He only made the announcement on 28 May, just three days before the expiration of Ithuba’s licence. He has yet to provide reasons for the delay.

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