South African court sets aside Sizekhaya's National Lottery licence and orders a fresh decision

The High Court in Pretoria on November 2, 2026, set aside Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau's decision to award South Africa's Fourth National Lottery and Sports Pools Licence to Sizekhaya Holdings (RF) (Pty) Ltd, and declared invalid the licence agreement between the minister, the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) and Sizekhaya.

The declaration of invalidity is suspended for two successive six-month periods. In the first, the minister must decide the award again, and must disregard the report and recommendations of a Ministerial Committee he appointed during the original process. If Sizekhaya is not chosen, the second period allows the minister to conclude a new licence agreement and put transitional arrangements in place. Sizekhaya, in which JSE-listed Goldrush Holdings holds a stake, took over the lottery from Ithuba Holdings in June 2026 and continues to run it in the meantime.

The judgment, by Judge Neil Davis, decided review applications brought by unsuccessful bidders, including Ithuba Lottery, the sister company of the previous operator, with the EFF intervening.

Why the award was set aside

The minister appointed the Ministerial Committee on January 26, 2025 to reassess the bids. According to the judgment, the RFP that set the rules of the competition made no provision for such a committee or a second evaluation, and the committee re-scored all the criteria using different weightings.

"On the face of it then, the unilateral insertion of a further process, namely a re-evaluation of everything that had gone before by another body, in this case the Ministerial Committee, would be procedurally unfair," Davis wrote, according to Africa Daily's report of the judgment.

The NLC's original evaluation ranked Ringeta Consortium first with 73.92 points, ahead of Sizekhaya on 72.95, Wina Njalo on 72.64 and Ithuba Lottery on 72.04, and the NLC's adjudication committee recommended Ringeta as preferred bidder and Sizekhaya as reserve. The Ministerial Committee instead recommended Sizekhaya as preferred bidder and Ithuba as reserve. The minister announced Sizekhaya as the winner on May 28, 2025.

The court accepted the minister's good faith and did not find that he had handed his decision to the committee. It held that creating and using a body the RFP did not contemplate was an unlawful and procedurally unfair exercise of his powers.

The judgment also says the minister must consider, when he decides again, a recommendation by the Quality Assurance Committee that the winning bidder undertake not to fund political parties.

What the court rejected

The court dismissed Ithuba's argument that Sizekhaya lacked fully committed funding when it won the licence, finding the minister's acceptance of the funding arrangements neither irrational nor unreasonable. It also declined the EFF's request to read section 13(2)(b)(iv) of the Lotteries Act more broadly to cover indirect financial interests of political office-bearers, noting that the RFP already extended the prohibition to indirect interests.

The EFF was ordered to pay its own costs. The minister, the NLC and Sizekhaya were ordered to pay the costs of Ithuba Lottery and Ringeta. The EFF welcomed the judgment in a statement on its official X account.

In November 2025 the same court dismissed Ithuba Lottery's urgent application to stop Sizekhaya taking over the lottery while the review was pending, Goldrush Holdings told shareholders in a SENS announcement at the time.

For more on South Africa's gambling policy, see our report on the national online gambling tax.

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