As the allegations of corruption in its payouts to beneficiaries against the NLC mounted, it has drawn the veil of secrecy over the lists of its beneficiaries.
"The DA has decided to take this course of action because the NLC and the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ebrahim Patel have denied multiple requests for this information to be made public," DA MP Mat Cuthbert said in a statement.
The documents Cuthbert wants is the list of 2018-2019 NLC proactive-funding beneficiaries, 2019-2020 proactive-funding beneficiaries and the 2020 Covid-19 Relief Fund beneficiaries.
Regarding Cuthbert's request to see the beneficiary list, NLC chairperson Alfred Nevhutanda said it was against the law to publish the list and that they feared criminals would target the beneficiaries, to which Cuthbert responded by saying it meant they had been contravening the law for the previous four years because they had published the beneficiaries lists on their website.
After the publication of that report, an NGO whose only work seems to involve defending the NLC, the United Civil Society in Action (UCSA), has approached the court stop GroundUp and the NLC from publishing beneficiary and project names, NPO and NGO registration numbers, and the amounts and timing of grant allocations.
