Winner of R3.7m Lotto jackpot won’t tell his mom
‘Her excitement will blow my cover’
A Gauteng small business owner is SA’s newest multimillionaire.
His R20 ticket won him R37.9m jackpot for July 29 Lotto draw.
Disbelief was initially the dominant emotion when he realised he had won.
“Since finding out that I won the jackpot‚ I have not been able to sleep. I have mixed emotions. At some point I am calm‚ the next I am nervous.
“I have had a roller coaster of emotions‚” the winner told national lottery operator Ithuba.
“I slept with the ticket under my pillow for two nights and kept on waking up every hour to check if indeed I’m the holder of the lucky jackpot winning ticket and not dreaming.”
The winner plans to keep quiet about his new riches.
“I am not planning on telling any member of my family‚ including my mother. I’m scared that if I tell her‚ she might get excited and tell her best friend by mistake [who will tell others] and that might cause me unwanted problems and will compromise my safety.”
Among the first things he wants to do with the cash windfall is to erect a tombstone for his late father‚ and buy a car for his business because it requires him to travel around the province to meet his clients.
He also wants to extend his mother’s house into a doublestorey.
He will only buy himself a proper house in one of the province’s exclusive housing estates next year‚ because he does not want people to suspect that he is the winner of a lotto jackpot. He will also invest a small amount towards growing his business and the rest he will invest in himself.
“We are so excited to have created yet another instant millionaire in a space of four months. Our first major 2020 winner won a massive R135m PowerBall jackpot in April. This was soon followed by the R77m PowerBall winner from the Tuesday 30 June 2020 draw‚ and the R15m Lotto Plus1 winner from the Wednesday 1 July 2020 draw.
“The biggest jackpot thus far was won by a player from KwaZulu-Natal who won the biggest Powerball Plus jackpot ever of R153m in our July 10 draw using their Standard Bank app.
“We promised to offer big jackpots and we are happy that we have been able to offer these big amounts to our players‚” Busisiwe Msizi‚ head of corporate relations at Ithuba, said.
The company has offered trauma counselling and financial advice to the winner‚ as part of its service that comes at no cost to people who win amounts over R50‚000. –