Lottery secretary resigns after pocketing R6-million while on suspension

Nompumelelo Nene earned nearly R6-million while on suspension. Photo from NLC advertorial published in the Mail & Guardian

• National Lotteries Commission company secretary Nompumelelo Nene, who was facing 145 serious disciplinary charges, has resigned.
• Suspended on full pay over two years ago and facing serious allegations she had covered up corruption in the lottery, she earned nearly R6-million during her suspension.
• She resigned after defeats in court ended her Stalingrad legal strategy to stop her disciplinary hearing.
• Nene argued her suspension constituted unfair, constructive dismissal and was a fundamental breach of her employment contract.
• The Lottery says her resignation was an attempt to avoid a possible guilty finding.

Suspended National Lotteries Commission (NLC) company secretary Nompumelelo Nene, who earned close to R6-million since her suspension on 18 November 2022 on full pay, has resigned. Her last day as an NLC employee was 28 February.

Nene faced 145 disciplinary charges for alleged failures to uphold the interests of the NLC, ensure proper financial management and internal controls, and ensure transparent use of resources. She was also charged with the alleged misuse of NLC property and assets.

In response she launched a Stalingrad-like legal defence to halt the internal disciplinary inquiry. Now, she has resigned.

In her letter of resignation, Nene argued that her suspension constituted unfair, constructive dismissal and was a fundamental breach of her employment contract.

The NLC has denied the allegations of constructive dismissal and said that her resignation was an attempt to avoid the disciplinary hearing and a possible guilty finding.

Cover up

One of the charges she faced was for allegedly ordering the NLC’s chief information officer to delete grant beneficiary records from the NLC’s IT system.

Investigations by the then-newly appointed NLC executive revealed that key documents relating to proactive funding, which was at the heart of the looting of the lottery, were missing and presumed to have been destroyed to cover up corruption involving dodgy multimillion-rand lottery-funded projects.

Besides the deletion of data, her charges included

• the improper appointment of Mabotle Mokwebo as “senior specialist: corporate governance and ethics relations issues” (GroundUp previously reported how companies and family members and other people linked to Mokwebo were appointed as service providers to the NLC);
• financial misconduct relating to recommendations for the appointments of service providers, including the MSG Group, which the NLC used to pay over R1.7-million for a Women’s Day “flash mob activation” that never happened;
• conflict of interest by failing to disclose a relationship with Rebotile Malomane, the wife of former NLC chief operating officer Philemon Letwaba, who benefited from millions in lottery funding;
• non-compliance and irregular expenditure involving misconduct related to supply chain management and procurement requirements, which allegedly resulted in irregular or fruitless and wasteful expenditure;
• involvement in the appointment and payment of Elsiscope, of which a close relative of Mokwebo’s husband was the sole director;
• irregular expenditure related to the appointment of Neo Solutions, which was paid over R26-million in fees by the NLC;
• gross misconduct in the appointment of Pro Ethics for specific ethics-related projects and irregular payments to third-party service providers; and
• Irregular payments for advertising purchases. (Sunday World was paid about R24.7-million between 2020 and 2022, the biggest recipient of NLC advertising expenditure.)

Nene also submitted an affidavit supporting the NLC’s request, under its previous board, for the State Security Agency to investigate the leaking of information and documents, which were used to expose rampant corruption involving lottery funding.

In her affidavit, she said: “In or about 21 December 2019, the classification of all pro-actively funding projects was heightened to ‘secret’ and projects were removed from the grant funding system and maintained manually under the custody of [Tsietsi Maselwa] the NLC’s [then] Deputy Information Office, Executive Manager Legal in order to safeguard [the] information.”

Lawfare

Last year, Nene launched several expensive but ultimately unsuccessful applications to halt her disciplinary inquiry.

She also launched an application against the Auditor-General in the Pretoria High Court to set aside its findings in 2019/20 and 2020/21 that implicated her in misconduct relating to unauthorised expenditure on media services, accountants and auditors. It is unclear if she will proceed with that application now that she has resigned.

In March last year, she failed in an urgent legal bid to halt the disciplinary proceedings against her. The judge ruled that her urgent application was without merit and struck it from the court roll. The High Court ordered Nene’s attorneys to make submissions as to why they should not pay the costs personally and on a punitive scale.

The following month the same judge ordered that Nene should bear the consequences, rather than her counsel, and pay punitive costs for “wasting the court’s time”.

She was back in court in November 2024, when she failed in an attempt to force the Auditor-General, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Competition, and the NLC to hand over documents she claimed she needed for her application to set aside findings of irregular expenditure under her watch at the NLC.

But the judge dismissed her application, which he described as a “fishing expedition”.

Nene failed to respond to questions sent to her via WhatsApp.

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