Lottery millions gone as farm stripped bare
Marikana widows were supposed to benefit from project
● It was billed as a farming project that would uplift impoverished residents of North West and the widows of striking miners killed by police at Marikana in 2012.
But a visit this week to the R16.5m Marikana poultry project, funded by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC), revealed an abandoned, derelict site that has been decimated by vandals.
Only the foundation and a few damaged walls remain. A dug-up trench shows where electric cables have been stolen. Pieces of aluminium wire scattered across the site are the remnants of what used to be an electric fence and steel stumps are all that remain of what was once an egg-packaging facility, a storehouse and a large chicken house.
“It operated for about six months but was abandoned last year. There was no security, so people just helped themselves to everything that was here,” said a local who did not want to be named.
The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) says the land on which the farm was set up is owned by a shelf company, Silverlite Trading, of which former NLC board member William Huma is the only listed director. It claims Huma’s wife Lerato Lorraine Moyo was listed as a director of the Samaritans Initiatives nonprofit organisation, which leased the land for the poultry farm.
“It’s sad that the Marikana name is used by people to enrich themselves,” Marikana widow Aisha Fundi told the Sunday Times this week. “What is also sad is that poultry and farming are some of the ideas we have been suggesting to those who want us to find something sustainable for the widows.”
Fundi said it was unfair that their names were used “to motivate for projects we are not told of or even involved in”.
The SIU’s probe into the Marikana chicken farm is part of its third phase of investigations into corruption at the NLC. The funding deals investigated in the latest round amount to more than R905m. The investigations were envisaged to be completed in December but an interim report is due to be submitted to President Cyril Ramaphosa at the end of the month.
Since Ramaphosa proclaimed the SIU investigations in November 2020, NLC deals to the value of R1.4bn have been probed.
Included in the latest investigation is funding for another poultry farm involving actress Terry Pheto and her sister Dimakatso. Her sister was listed as a director of a company called Zibsibix, which scored a R5m grant from the NLC in December 2018.
The SIU says that money was paid into different accounts, some of which were linked to the sisters. The case has been referred to the civil litigation unit for recovery and criminal referrals are being prepared for the National Prosecuting Authority.
In March last year, Terry Pheto’s threebedroom Bryanston house was auctioned after it emerged that it was built with funds siphoned from the NLC.
Efforts to get comment from Terry and Dimakatso Pheto were unsuccessful this week.
SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said the Marikana chicken farm had received a R13m grant in June 2019, paid in two tranches of R7m and R6m. In November 2020, the Samaritans Initiative made another application and received a further R3.5m.
“We are going to take civil action to set aside the grant and then recover the money,” Kganyago told the Sunday Times.
Approached for comment yesterday, Huma denied any involvement in the Marikana project.
“The NPO which received funds from the NLC is renting the farm from the company of which I am just a director,” Huma said.
He denied that his wife had ever been involved in the Samaritans Inititative. “Someone somewhere is deliberately confusing issues.”
When asked if the Sunday Times could speak to his wife, he said: “She is out of town on a church function.
“The SIU is certainly defaming her as it will show later in subsequent legal proceedings. There is no such evidence. Just like me, she has not seen the SIU report. I hope the SIU will give me and her an opportunity to give our side of the story without having to resort to the courts.”
Asked to connect the Sunday Times with a representative of the Samaritans Initiative, Huma said: “The guy I signed the lease with has left and now lives in the Netherlands.”
He said the NPO was no longer paying rent since it had stopped operating.
A man who worked on the Marikana project told the Sunday Times this week that the handful of people working there said they had no budget to secure the facility.
“We were driven off the project, as every day we needed to deal with something which was stolen the previous night ... the criminals mainly targeted copper cables.”
The worker, who did not want to be named, said though the farm had been operational and had begun to supply regular clients with eggs, it had never reached the stage where it could employ local residents.