MGE "looting" scandal continues: R233.8 million earmarked for ghost companies

About R233.8 million in taxpayer funds is set to flow to ghost and deregistered companies.

The money is allocated for Mzansi Golden Economy (MGE) for 2026/27.

The call opened on 5 December 2025 and closed on 1 February 2026. By 22 April, DSAC had announced about 100 approved projects. But today The Public Dispatch can reveal that, ALMOST all the approved companies are non-compliant.

• More than half of the approved companies have not submitted their annual returns,

• About a quarter of them do not exist,

• A handful of them have been deregistered by CIPC,

Among the so called 'cultural' beneficiaries are:

• Tax Solutions firms.

• Logistics and Innovation companies.

• General trading entities with no visible footprint in the creative sector beyond government tenders

It doesn't stop there, some of the approved companies were registered just hours before the application deadline.

"How a company registered on a Wednesday can produce a compliant, vetted, and competitive proposal by Friday, complete with a SARS Good Standing certificate, defies logic. It suggests what we've been saying, that MGE results are rigged from the inside," said an aggrieved artist.

Serial offenders and blacklisted ghosts

Artists complained that some names on the approved list are repeat beneficiaries, with individuals and entities securing government funding again and again, despite past blacklisting or serious concerns over delivery and accountability.

"We are aggrieved because this is taxpayer money being awarded to entities that cannot even pass a basic CIPC compliance check. How exactly does DSAC’s adjudication panel justify these decisions? Where is the rigorous due diligence? Where is the vetting that ordinary citizens and legitimate artists must endure?"

"The message to genuine and struggling artists is clear, the system works only for the connected individuals. It doesn't work for those who are actually producing work on the ground," said an artist who preferred to remain anonymous." said an aggrieved artist.

Recurring rot

This is not the first time. Similar concerns about non-compliant companies, repeat recipients, and poor vetting were raised in Parliament last year. Yet the problems persist, raising serious questions about political capture, cronyism, and the blatant waste of public funds.

Minister accused of misleading parliament over MGE panel

In October 2025, The Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie was accused of misleading Parliament over the appointment of the MGE adjudication panel.

McKenzie had previously denied appointing members of his own party, the Patriotic Alliance (PA), to the panel. However, it later emerged that at least three panel members, including chairperson Steve Motale (PA national spokesperson), are active PA members. At that time, the Director-General, Cynthia Khumalo confirmed that the minister handpicked the panel without following standard criteria or proper conflict-of-interest vetting.

DA MP Leah Potgieter has challenged these inconsistencies, highlighting the contradictions in the minister’s statements to Parliament.

Institutional malfeasance

The DSAC’s insistence on funding blacklisted individuals and deregistered entities, overseen by a politically handpicked panel, is no longer a matter of administrative error, it is institutional malfeasance. While real artists wait for relief, the "ghosts" of the MGE list are preparing to collect millions. The question remains: who is the DSAC really serving? It certainly isn't the taxpayers, and it certainly isn't the artists.