South African Lottery
CCIJ South African Hub Leader Raymond Joseph and his team at GroundUp continue to uncover more evidence of corruption within the South African National Lotteries Commission.
Read more from CCIJ’s global investigation into the lottery here.
Lottery millions splurged on glitzy award ceremonies
GroundUp found that nearly R7 million in lottery money has been used to fund the Mbokodo Award Ceremonies. The Carol Bouwer Productions company, who stages the awards, said that the money was also used to run workshops, an exhibition, and women’s summits that impacted more than 900 women in cooperatives and more than 1,000 businesses. Accounts, however, show that almost all the money was used for the awards.
Read the whole story here.
Lottery whistleblower “pressured” to pay IT company to build athletics track
Buyisiwe Khoza, director of the nonprofit Inqaba Yokulinda, said she was pressured into paying Lottery money to the company Unicus Solu(IT)ons to build an athletics track. The company never built the track, forcing Khoza’s own company to finish the job. The Lottery money was never paid back to the nonprofit, even when Khoza reported the incident to the National Lotteries Commission.
Read the whole story here.
H2OFail Stories Reach Broader Audience
Two recently published stories from CCIJ members have been republished in AfricaBrief, a continent-wide publication.
Grape crop brings in millions, but farm workers live a harsh life
In a new article for CCIJ’s H2OFail project, Sonja Smith explores the working conditions of farmers on Namibian vineyards who are underpaid and face extreme water scarcity. The problem, Smith writes, has led to the deaths of 15 farmers since 2006. Workers on the farms have been asking for help from the government for years and extreme drought throughout Namibia may be enough to push officials into action, but residents are still skeptical of any real change.
Read the full story here.
Water crisis ravages City of Kings
The city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe is facing a myriad of water crises, including contaminated water that has led to a diarrhea outbreak that killed 13 people in July and infected more than 2,000 others. Climate change, writes Brezhnev Malaba, has caused severe drought, drying up many water sources throughout the city, forcing many to collect their water from unsafe sources. The burden of collecting water is typically put on women, who often encounter intense violence along their journeys, including physical and sexual assault. Bulawayo’s water woes have spurred many to action, creating a “water crisis committee” made up of politicians and citizens who aim to find solutions to the crisis.
Read the full story here.