After months of ducking and diving, the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) has given in to growing pressure and released details of Lottery grants that it had refused to make public.

For 18 years, the NLC has included the details of grants in its annual report, until last year when it failed to publish them, citing a section of the Lotteries Act that it said forbade it from releasing this information, notes a GroundUp report.

The lists were tabled before Parliament by Minister of Trade, Industry & Competition Ebrahim Patel yesterday. In an accompanying letter, Patel made it clear he believed the information should be public.

The decision to release the information came after an abrupt about-turn by ANC members of Parliament’s Trade, Industry & Competition Committee, who had previously defended the NLC.

The NLC also released some details of recipients of a R150 million Covid-19 relief fund for struggling non-profit organisations that it had refused to make public.

But, notes GroundUp, the details on the list handed to Parliament are incomplete as the total only adds up to just over R21.8m. There was no explanation for the absence of details about the remaining R128.2m, whether it had been disbursed at all or which organisations had received this money.

Mat Cuthbert, Democratic Alliance deputy shadow Minister for Trade, Industry and Competition, who was instrumental in fighting for the release of the lists, welcomed the release of the information.

‘The DA still remains resolute in its belief that the NLC has committed a crime by having withheld this information from the public domain for such a long period of time,’ he said in a media release.

Full GroundUp report