- An organisation helping victims of abuse was hijacked in 2018 to apply for an R18-million grant from the National Lotteries Commission.
- The looters used a fraudulent bank account and transferred the funds, meant to go towards a rural cycling project in Limpopo, to their own companies.
- A property bought with the stolen funds has now been frozen by a preservation order obtained by the Special Investigating Unit.
For years, Yolisa Yako dreamed of buying a piece of land for her non-profit organisation, the Make Me Movement (MMM), to use as a retreat and safe space for abuse victims.
But her dream turned into a nightmare after a woman who had received counselling from MMM offered to help Yako apply for a grant from the National Lotteries Commission (NLC).
Instead, her organisation was hijacked and fraudulently used in 2018 to apply for almost R18-million from the NLC, supposedly for a project for “cycling development in rural areas”.
Years later, Yako’s dream is in tatters and her organisation has collapsed.
Now, action is finally being taken against some of the people accused of syphoning off millions from the MMM grant. Last month, the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) obtained a preservation order, allowing it to freeze a smallholding in Centurion, near Pretoria, bought using funds misappropriated from the MMM grant.
The main beneficiaries of the funds were Collin Tshisimba, his “life partner” Fulufhelo Promise Kharivhe, and Jacob Ramuhashi, who claimed to be MMM’s director in the grant application. They are among 16 different people and entities named in the order.
Detailed questions were sent to Collin Tshisimba via WhatsApp. He responded: “Vo[e]tsek”.
Ramuhashi and Kharivhe, who were sent questions via Tshisimba, did not respond to GroundUp’s questions.
Hijacked
Yako told GroundUp that she was approached in 2017 by Sibongile Mokhokha, who was a beneficiary of MMM’s programme for victims of gender-based violence (GBV).
“[She said] that the work we were doing was beautiful. And she said she knew people who had contacts at the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) and could help us get funding,” Yako said.
Yako was overjoyed, having spent years trying to raise funds for her ambitious project. She handed over several documents to Mokhokha, having been told they were necessary to apply for a grant. These included copies of her ID documents and those of MMM’s directors, as well as the organisation’s registration certificate and its constitution.
But suddenly, Mokhokha went quiet. “She asked me why I was contacting her, and that she would call me when the money came,” said Yako.
Mokhokha told Yako, who knew that Ramuhashi was involved, that he was “a dangerous man”. Mokhokha then blocked Yako’s number.
Later, Ramuhashi asked Yako for a meeting at her home. Fearing for her safety and on the verge of a breakdown, Yako fled to her home village. She told GroundUp she was depressed, disillusioned and “very scared that something would happen to me”.
Yako heard nothing further. The first time she learned that funding had been awarded and paid out, supposedly to her organisation, was when GroundUp contacted her in 2020 to ask about the project funded by the NLC.
Mokhokha could not be reached for comment.
Money looted
MMM’s application for R17.8-million was submitted to the NLC on 7 July 2018 and approved the next day under the NLC’s discredited proactive funding mechanism, which was widely abused to loot the Lottery under the NLC’s previous leadership.
In the application, Ramuhashi signed documents as the director of MMM. He was never part of the organisation, says Yako. This is confirmed by the Department of Social Development’s registry of non-profit organisations.
MMM was registered as a non-profit organisation in the Western Cape, but the supposed cycling project was based in Limpopo.
The application included fraudulent financial statements prepared by Dzata Accountants, flagged by the SIU as one of several firms that helped organisations defraud the NLC.
The first tranche of R14.2-million was paid into a Nedbank account in MMM’s name on 27 July 2018. A second tranche of R3.6-million followed on 23 January 2019, even though no work on the funded project had taken place.
Meanwhile, the actual MMM’s FNB bank account, managed by Yako, did not receive any money. At the time the first tranche was paid to the fraudulent bank account, the account had a small overdraft, bank statements show. Yako closed the account in October 2018 to avoid racking up bank charges.
Money poured out of the fraudulent Nedbank account, but none of it went to the cycling development project it was supposed to fund.
The SIU has found that the day after the first funds were received, R3-million was transferred to Thwala Front CC, a company controlled by Kharivhe. Another R1-million was paid to Black Tshisimba (Pty) Ltd, one of Tshisimba’s companies. Thwala Front then paid R780,000 to property conveyancers to buy land at Brakspruit, north of Louis Trichardt. An amount of R3-million was also paid to Athletics SA.
Both Thwala and Black Tshisimba have since been deregistered by the CIPC for failing to submit statutory annual returns.
R1-million was also paid to Mountain Village Recreation Centre, a private company solely directed by Ramuhashi, which runs a resort in Malamulele, Limpopo.
Mountain Village contributed an undisclosed amount towards a luxury R27-million mansion for former NLC chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda, according to the SIU. Mountain Village was also later deregistered for not filing returns.
Between August and September 2018, a further R4.1-million was transferred to Thwala Front by the NLC. And R2-million was then paid to Ndavha Management, another of Tshisimba’s companies.
On 23 November 2018, Tshisimba, as director of Black Tshisimba, signed a purchase agreement for the now-frozen property in Centurion and about R2.5-million was paid to the conveyancing attorneys handling the sale. The Centurion property was registered to Black Tshisimba on 26 April.
A R150,198 property transfer fee was paid by another hijacked non-profit organisation, Uprising Youth Development. Uprising had received a R5.5-million lottery grant funding for a sports project in Alexander Bay, which never materialised. The organisation’s real office-bearers previously denied any knowledge of the grant.
After the second tranche was paid into the bank account, another R2.5-million was transferred to Thwala Front.
By then, the bogus MMM Nedbank account had only R1,371 left of the millions that had been paid by the NLC for the cycling project
Another cycling scam
This was not the first time Kharivhe, Tshisimba and Ramuhashi were involved in a dubious cycling-related lottery grant. GroundUp previously reported how an entire R9.5-million grant awarded in 2017 for “cycling development in Limpopo” was misappropriated.
That grant application was submitted by the non-profit organisation Limpopo Recreational Providers on 30 August 2017. The funds were deposited into the organisation’s bank account on 13 September.
Less than two weeks later, the grant money was transferred to three companies linked to Tshisimba, Kharivhe and Ramuhashi, according to an SIU presentation to Parliament earlier this year.
Tshisimba’s Ndavha Management received R5.7-million. Wa Rothe Construction, of which Ramuhashi was the sole director, received almost R1.8-million. Kharivhe’s Thwala Front received R2-million.
The SIU has identified Tshisimba and Kharivhe as kingpins in the looting of the NLC. The smallholding in Centurion is the seventh property purchased using lottery funds linked to the couple, which the courts have frozen. The properties are
- three parcels in Louis Trichardt: one in an industrial area; an undeveloped site in an upmarket suburb; and a vacant piece of land in one of the town’s oldest areas;
- two houses in Centurion: one in Monavoni, and one in the upmarket Peach Tree Extension of the Copperleaf Golf and Country Estate;
- a farm 15km south of Louis Trichardt; and
- the smallholding in Gauteng is the most recent property bought with Lottery funds, which has been frozen by the Special Tribunal.
Nineteen of the SIU’s investigations into dodgy lottery grants – including several involving the couple – have been handed over to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). So far, only one case has resulted in a prosecution, unrelated to those involved in the MMM grant.
