‘The good times are back’

Nothing illustrates South Africa’s love of tata ma chance more than the reported 20 seconds it took for the first lottery ticket to be snapped up when the lotto relaunched last Friday.

After the acrimonious and fraught months since the national lottery’s suspension in March its re-awarding to preferred bidder Gidani has been met with relief, especially on the part of Gidani chairperson and chief executive Dr Bongani Khumalo.

A bottle of Moët & Chandon rests on top of a cupboard in his office; a room that is otherwise sparse and meticulously tidy, considering the frantic activity taking place a few floors below in Gidani’s Midrand offices. Crates of lottery tickets are being prepared for shuttling across the country and security guards are thick on the ground as the company finally gets to do the job it has been waiting to do since March’s gaming freeze.

Khumalo admits the Pretoria High Court judgement posed ‘incredible challenges” to the company. Contractual arrangements with suppliers were in place, not to mention nearly 8 000 retailers with machines ready to go live. The uncertainty of the review process and its outcome meant that the company had to stay intensely focused, he says.

Khumalo regards the trials of the past few months as a test the company successfully passed. ‘I am happy we have come through this phase, we are battle-hardened by it.”

Finding something positive in a tough situation, however, is something Khumalo prides himself on.

From rural KwaZulu-Natal, Khumalo grew up in a large family ‘where things were not brought to you on a silver platter”. Khumalo, by his own estimation, has the ability to turn challenging situations into ‘positive opportunities” for learning and growth.

Khumalo demonstrated this while waiting for a decision from the minister of the trade and industry. Gidani used the time to test its technology to ensure glitches would be kept to a minimum.

Khumalo dismisses concerns about Greek partner and lottery systems provider Intralot’s ability to manage the technology for a lottery operation the size of South Africa’s.

‘I am happy with the technical abilities of Intralot,” says Khumalo. ‘Intralot has won the business in Russia, where it will run a much larger operation than the one in South Africa. Its contract to supply the technology to Opap, the Greek national lottery, has been expanded … it will be doing a lot more work.”

Khumalo affirms the company as its partner, pointing out that it operates on four continents, including Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa. Intralot is the world’s second-largest lottery systems supplier.

Khumalo is adamant Gidani is the right company for the job, particularly after winning the bid a second time. Given that it has pledged 34% of its takings to the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, a 7% increase on Uthingo’s contribution, perhaps it is.

But there are more positive spin-offs than the good causes being funded, or even the instant millionaires that the lottery makes, says Khumalo. The announcement that the lottery has returned is, in Khumalo’s eyes, a rejuvenation of the retail sector, especially among SMMEs.

‘You know 87% of the retail outlets are owned independently by small and medium enterprises,” he says, ‘and 47% are in the hands of the previously disadvantaged … and 20% of the retailers are in the townships.”

But it’s not simply the financial benefits for a multitude of stakeholders that has Khumalo fired up, it is the purpose behind the creation of a national lottery that moves him.

‘The whole idea came about as a result of human, social and economic need,” he says. ‘While we come to it as business people, as entrepreneurs, we have to have a strong social conscience.”

Khumalo does not shy away from admitting the difficulty that many organisations have had accessing funding through the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund. He sees Gidani as a facilitator that will smooth this process.

‘We want to use our relationship with all the stakeholders, including our place in this value chain, to make sure that that which is the fundamental reason for the existence of the lottery is well communicated and delivered to the satisfaction of the South African people.”

It is hard to gauge where Khumalo’s intense interest in the human side of business began. Perhaps it was in the height of apartheid, during his years working for the South African Council of Churches as director of communications under Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Perhaps it began when he was working as director for the South African Red Cross between 1986 and 1989.

He remembers these times with fondness. But it was his time as deputy chief executive of Eskom, from 1991 to 2000, that he considers a defining period in his career that informed his approach to business interests, including Gidani.

‘I learned the synergy and affinity between being a corporate man and a statesman,” says Khumalo. ‘It was a place that was a hybrid of a job and a school of business and other forms of leadership.”

Khumalo compares his role at Eskom with that of an inkhankhatha, a man who, in Xhosa tradition, takes care of initiates as they make their way into manhood.

‘I had the opportunity to influence those who were younger than me,” he says. ‘I helped others to feel the stretch, especially young people who needed to be helped to become workers, to become professionals, to become managers.”

Khumalo is chairperson of advertising firm Grey Global (SA) and IT solutions company EDS, as well as an independent non-executive director on the board of Anglo Platinum.

He is committed to the country’s fight against HIV/Aids. He is also professor extraordinaire at Stellenbosch university’s African Centre for HIV/Aids, a patron of the South African Business Coalition against Aids and a former member of the South African National Aids Council.

For now, though, Khumalo will focus on Gidani as the Lotto prepares for its first R15-million draw on Saturday October 13. ‘The good times are back,” he says, smiling.