13 February 2026
Since 2017, the National Lotteries Commission has awarded more than R37-million for this old age home. It is still unfinished and is now being looted. Archive photo: Raymond Joseph
An unfinished lottery-funded old age home in the village of Marapyane in Mpumalanga is steadily being looted, despite attempts by the local community to protect it.
But the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) says it is unable to do anything to help.
The home is one of over a dozen lottery-funded projects that were left unfinished for years, after hundreds of millions of rands meant for their construction were looted.
Members of the Marapyane community have managed to recover some of the looted material (see here and here), but say they are fighting a losing battle.
“The NLC is a funding body and, under the current project model, does not directly provide or manage on-site security for projects post-disbursement,” the NLC told GroundUp in response to a question about the looting.
“This [looting] incident underscores the critical importance of our newly-established Community Infrastructure Reparations Process, which is designed to permanently resolve the status of such projects,” the NLC said.
The NLC told GroundUp it was making contact with “relevant community stakeholders”.
The old-age home is situated in the same village as the luxury house of former NLC chief operating officer Phillemon Letwaba, who resigned in 2022, weeks before he was due to appear before a disciplinary hearing to answer charges of abusing his position to enrich himself and his family.
The NLC had since 2017 already pumped almost R37.8-million in grants into the home through the Matieni Community Centre, a hijacked non-profit organisation (NPO). But the home has never been operational.
Since last year, a community-driven initiative has been underway to register the home and raise funds to complete its construction.
There have been informal discussions with NLC Commissioner Jodi Scholtz and a representative of a newly formed non-profit organisation, Tlhabo Ya Letsatsi, which hopes to complete and operate the home.
Tlhabo Ya Letsatsi has applied to the NLC for a grant of R16.7-million to finish the home so that it can accommodate elderly people from Marapyane and surrounding villages.
“This would include installing electrical and plumbing facilities, and finishings for the home,” William Kau, a community member involved in the initiative, said. The funding would also be used for furniture, especially beds, and for equipping the home’s kitchen.
The tribal council owns the land and has granted permission to Tlhabo Ya Letsatsi to occupy the property.
Representatives of the Tlhabo Ya Letsatsi have also applied to the Department of Social Development for an operating licence for the home.
GroundUp has reported how some of the money intended for the home was used for the construction of Letwaba’s house, a kilometre away. Leaked bank statements for Upbrand Properties, which is linked to Letwaba and his family, showed how the company was directly involved in expensive lottery-funded work at Marapyane. The bank statements revealed that Upbrand was involved in directly paying for material, wages and equipment for the Marapyane home and other lottery-funded old age homes.
Upbrand also contributed towards the construction of Letwaba’s luxury house in Marapyane.
These payments include a R100,000 roof slab for the house, R90,493 for decor, R126,560 for trees and R33,200 to a company called Mystique Mirrors.
Other payments by Upbrand, marked on the bank statements as “Marapyane house”, total over R231,000. There were also numerous payments for “material”, artisans who worked on the house, palisade fencing, paving, “water solution” and waterproofing.
There are also several payments of over R61,000 for “CCTV Nkandla”. Letwaba refers to his house in Marapyane as “Nkandla” (the name of President Jacob Zuma’s home in the village of Nkandla).
Also, within a week of the NLC approving a R20 million grant in 2017 to Matieni Community Centre to build the old age home in Marapyane, R5-million was paid by Matieni to attorneys handling the purchase of a luxury home in Rustenberg by former NLC board member, William Huma.
Responding to questions, the NLC said the old-age home in Marapyane was “in a reasonable state of completion with high potential for collaboration and sustainable ownership that can be optimally utilised in the community.”
A decision on its future would be made once the NLC had received an engineer’s report on the state of the home and the costs of completion.
“The allocation of funds … will be determined by the outcomes of the Community Infrastructure Reparations Process,” the NLC said.