South Africa: Three Candidates Recommended for Lottery Chair

5 December 2025
GroundUp (Cape Town)
By Raymond Joseph

Portfolio committee's recommendation must be confirmed by national assembly, and then Minister Parks Tau has the final say

Three people have been recommended to chair the National Lotteries Commission (NLC).

Parliament's portfolio committee on trade, industry and competition, which oversees the lottery, has recommended King Tembinkosi Bonakele, Mpho Mosing and Lufono Toyko Nevondwe for the key post.

Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines

The committee spent Tuesday interviewing shortlisted candidates. A report will now be sent to the Speaker to be tabled before and approved by the National Assembly.

The names will then be submitted to Minister Parks Tau to decide which of the three he will appoint.

The current chair is Barney Pityana, who quit recently at the age of 80, with two years of his five-year tenure left. Pityana agreed to stay on until his successor was appointed.

It is highly unlikely that a decision will be made this year, as Parliament goes into recess at the end of this week after its final plenary session for 2025. The earliest it will be tabled before Parliament is in February 2026.

The three recommended candidates are:

  • King Tembinkosi Bonakele is a current member of the NLC board. He has been a lawyer for 18 years, nine of which he served as a Commissioner of the Competition Commission of South Africa. He also holds an MBA. He scored 89 out of 100 points in the interview process.
  • Mpho Mosing is a former chair of the audit and risk committee of the State Diamonds Trader and a former member of the Gauteng Liquor Board's commission of inquiry into fraud and governance controls. She scored 71 points.
  • Lufuno Toyko Nevondwe is an advocate and the current chairperson of the independent trust responsible for safeguarding lottery funds on behalf of its beneficiaries. He is also currently a board member of the Film and Publication Board and the South African National Space Agency. He scored 69 points.

Tau is not required to choose the candidate with the highest score.

The 2022 interview process (through which Pityana was ultimately appointed chair) was an acrimonious stop-start process with long delays, and regularly degenerated into a war of words between the ANC and the DA. It was beset with litigation and acrimony as relations between then minister Ebrahim Patel and the NLC board soured.

But an MP involved in this year's deliberations described them as "collegial".

Read the original article on GroundUp.

Tagged:
Copyright © 2025 GroundUp. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica publishes around 600 reports a day from more than 90 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.