Mystery surrounds R27.5m lottery funding allocated to youth movement to build unneeded old age home

A Lottery-funded old age home in the Free State is yet to open its doors, despite receiving over R27.5-million in grants over the past five years.

The Free State Department of Social Development (FSDSD), says it was not consulted beforehand about the plan to build the home by the Southern African Youth Movement (SAYM), which received the multimillion-rand funding, including the initial location of the home in Botshabelo, or when it was moved to Thaba Nchu after protests in which the partially-built facility was vandalised.

When the department “was eventually consulted” in 2022, it had “advised that the old age home be repurposed to a substance abuse halfway house”, according to Lindiwe Mnguni, the FSDSD’s acting head of communications and marketing.

“The department has an old age home in Botshabelo, named Botshabelo Haven. The department was not part of plans to establish a similar facility in the area,” she said. “The department [also] has an old age home in Thaba Nchu and was not aware of other initiatives.”

The funding for the old age home was part of several grants totalling over R67.5-million doled out to SAYM-related entities by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) since 2016. The grants are all recorded in NLC annual reports under several slightly different variations of the organisation’s name.

SAYM also received almost R27-million from the NLC to build a drug rehabilitation centre in Mbombela in Mpumalanga, which is still not completed or operational, and R15-million to produce and stage a drug awareness musical, which only ran for a handful of performances.

Construction of the old age home initially began on a site in Botshabelo, about 66km from Bloemfontein. But when angry community members “vandalised and ransacked” the partially-built home, it was relocated to a new site in nearby Thaba Nchu, according to SAYM.

Explaining the normal procedure that should have been followed, Mnguni said: “Like any other facility to be constructed, proper infrastructure procedures must be followed like land identification, zoning of the land, etc. At all times the norms and standards guiding construction of the old age home must also be complied with.”

The FSDSD finally did a site inspection at the home on 25 May 2022, according to Mnguni. This was almost five years after the first R20-million grant was paid to SAYM in May 2017 for the old age home.

But, responding to questions from GroundUp, SAYM’s board chair, Dr Lekgotla Mafisa claimed his organisation had “consulted broadly with various stakeholders, including DSD, before the facility’s construction commenced.”

“As a result, the Tribal Authority, in consultation with the local municipality, issued a letter allocating the land,” Mafisa said. He did not mention in his responses to GroundUp that the FSDSD had advised that the home be turned into a substance abuse halfway house, as there was already an DSD old age home in Thaba Nchu.

Mnguni said the FSDSD was now working with SAYM “to provide guidance and support regarding the re-purposing of the old age home” and had issued a “conditional registration” for the halfway house, not the old age home the NLC had originally funded, in October last year “to enable SAYM to fast track the plan for re-purposing.”

Mafisa told GroundUp that SAYM had received an “interim licence” to operate from DSD, which would be given to them at a “handover ceremony”. Mnguni said the department was not aware of any handover ceremony.

“Full registration could only be issued once the facility met the set norms and standards,” she said.

Millions in funding

‘Vandalised and ransacked’

SAYM executive director Alfred Sigudhla in front of the old age home, then under construction, in a screenshot from a November 2020 video posted on the NLC’s YouTube page. (Fair use)