Millions in Lottery money spent on rarely visited football exhibition

First published by GroundUp.

The “Football Museum” ran out of funds in 2017 and could no longer afford to pay rent. An agreement was then reached with the FNB Stadium operators to allow them to include the exhibition in stadium tours, according to Pippa Freer, one of the directors of the non-profit company, Mzansi Football Museum, which set it up.

But this means that the From Freedom to Fanfare exhibition is only accessible to the public via a paid stadium tour one day a week. Entrance to the exhibition was previously free, according to Freer.

The National Lotteries Commission (NLC) allocated almost R14.5-million between 2014 and 2016 to what it described as a “football museum” – in reality a large exhibition showing South Africa’s history of hosting international sporting events.

Of this, R6.95-million went to the South African Hall of Fame at Sun City, which celebrates great South Africans.

The Football Museum had entered into a “mother-and-baby” agreement two years earlier to act as a conduit for the Hall of Fame’s lottery funding application. The Hall of Fame, also a non-profit, was unable to apply directly as it was newly established and could not supply the two years of financial statements required by the NLC.

The payment to the Hall of Fame was made after it complained to the NLC that funding intended for it, in terms of the conduit agreement, had been “hijacked” by the Football Museum.

The NLC then launched an investigation, which included a financial audit, into the museum’s funding.

The Hall of Fame, which had originally applied for R7-million in 2014, was later directly paid a total of R6.95-million in two tranches of R4-million and R2.95-million in 2016. This is unusual as the NLC normally makes conduit payments via the “mother” organisation.

Confusingly, both projects share the same project number, so it is impossible to work out – based on NLC annual reports – where the grants are listed and how the total grant of R14,452,722 was allocated between the two organisations.

Freer confirmed that her project had received about R7.4-million, while Hall of Fame chairman Johnny Burger said his project had received R6.95-million.

NLC spokesperson Ndivhuho Mafela did not respond to a question about the amounts allocated to the two organisations.

In our interview with Flow Communications, the company who put together the exhibition, the director said there was also an interactive robot of some sort. That wasn’t there when GroundUp visited. (Photo: Zoë Postman)