How Diphofa signed off NAC funds for her son-in-law

The National Arts Council (NAC) is facing fresh questions over its handling of public money after documents reveal that its former chief executive, Julie Diphofa, personally approved a bursary payment to a beneficiary understood to be connected to her family.

Funding Number 3368801 was dished out under the NAC’s 2020/21 individual bursaries programme. The beneficiary was allegedly Diphofa’s son in-law.

"At that time, the Diphofa's daughhter was still dating the guy. Eventually this beneficiary paid Lobola for Julie's daughter," a source revealed.

Diphofa, who was the accounting officer at the time, sat as the final approver on the very transaction that put public money into her relative’s education.

This is a textbook definition of a conflict of interest. Public Finance Management Act rules and basic public assurance principles demand that office-bearers declare personal interests and recuse themselves. The Public Dispatch asked the NAC whether any such declaration exists for this payment. The Council refused to answer.

Three documents, three different amounts zero explanation.

The official record is an embarrassment.

• The NAC’s own 2020/21 Annual Report (page 157) lists the approved bursary at R42 906.

• The university fee statement on the Council’s file shows academic charges of R28 522 for the 2021 year.

• The actual bank payment audit trail records a transfer of R21 453, exactly half the amount the annual report claimed was approved.

The discrepancies raise obvious questions, was the rest paid later? in another tranche? To someone else? The documents do not say. The NAC was asked. It did not respond.

Even worse, the fee statement is issued by the University of the Witwatersrand, where the student was registered for a master’s degree. The money, however, was paid to the University of Johannesburg, a different institutions. No explanation offered.

Diphofa and Bhoola's role

The payment was captured on 12 March 2021 and Reshma Bhoola was the final signatory. It then climbed the NAC's approval ladder until it reached the 'mother-in-law, Diphofa. It was Diphofa who gave the transaction its final approval.

Both names have since surfaced repeatedly in separate governance controversies, suspensions, acting appointments and a Public Protector inquiry at the NAC. When the same names keep appearing across unrelated financial scandals, it stops looking like coincidence and starts looking like a culture.

This is a pattern of rot, not an isolated incident.

This bursary affair did not emerge in a vacuum. In May 2026 the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture dissolved the entire NAC council, citing credible concerns over procurement decisions.

The same institution that could not keep its bursary figures straight, that allowed its CEO to sign off on family-linked payments, and that still cannot produce a conflict-of-interest declaration when asked, has been operating under a cloud for years.

The question is no longer whether this particular student deserved support. The question is whether the chief executive of a public arts funding body should ever have been allowed to put her signature on a payment that benefited her own family and why the numbers, the universities and the governance records are all in open contradiction.

Right of reply and still waiting

The Public Dispatch put detailed written questions to the National Arts Council and to Diphofa. Neither has responded, despite reminders. Their silence is now part of the story. Any reply received will be published in full.

Until then, the record stands, public money, family connections, conflicting amounts, mismatched institutions, and an approval chain that ends with the former CEO herself. South Africans fund the National Arts Council. They deserve better than this.