Deputy President Paul Mashatile answering questions in the National Assembly on Thursday.

• Deputy President Paul Mashatile could not escape questions in Parliament over his links to lottery operators in the country.
• Mashatile dared DA deputy chief whip Baxolile Nodada to lay charges against his children or associates if he knew they were criminals.
• He also said he would not stop his friendships with people who have gone into business while he was in politics.

Deputy President Paul Mashatile has dared anyone who has proof of his associates’ or children’s criminality to lay charges.

Mashatile answered questions in Parliament on Thursday, where his family and associates’ affairs were aired on the parliamentary floor.

“If you know that anybody around the DP, including my children, are criminals, go to the nearest police station and open a case,” said Mashatile in direct response to DA deputy chief whip Baxolile Nodada, who questioned if President Cyril Ramaphosa should take action against him for the scandals that have plagued him.

Headlines have swirled before and after Mashatile’s ascension to the country’s second-highest office: News24 reported his children receiving government tenders in Gauteng, a province where Mashatile was once in government.

In June 2025, the parliamentary Joint Committee on Ethics and Members’ Interests fined the deputy president R10 000 for failing to disclose a diamond his wife, Hlumile, received from controversial businessman Louis Liebenberg, as reported by News24.

In the latest headlines that feature Mashatile, News24 unpacked links between Mashatile and Moses Tembe, who won the tender for the country’s lottery.

READ | This house always wins: Lotto king Tembe forms companies with Mashatile’s people

Answering questions directly about this, Mashatile dared Nodada to lay charges against his associates or family. He also said he would not stop his friendships with people who have gone into business while he was in politics.

Addressing the fact that his associates, as revealed by News24, had attended this year’s State of the Nation Address (SONA), the deputy president said many of the people he’d invited were friends he’d known for more than 20 or 30 years. Some of those, he claimed, were friends before they were business people.

Mashatile said he did not recall his friends being criminals, but they were businesspeople.

In response to Nodada’s claims that the deputy president was friends with people “accused of fraud, racketeering, and money laundering”, Mashatile said:

Mashatile then said there shouldn’t be a problem if black people became wealthy, and people should not make assumptions that when black people became wealthy, the money must have been stolen or received irregularly or via tenders.

Addressing Nodada, Mashatile said: “It’s even shameful if it’s said by a black man like yourself – I think we should respect the fact that black people are allowed to do business.”

Mashatile said: “My friends have not stolen anything, and I’ll continue to invite them to Parliament.”

I won’t walk away from my friends

Earlier in the session, Mashatile answered a question from Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster of BOSA, who brought up the News24 investigation.

She said: “There appears to be an increasingly interconnected network between politically connected people, lottery interests, and business entities that are connected to you.”

She asked Mashatile whether he or anyone in his office had any involvement, influence, or interest in this tender process, and whether he would support a full investigation into the tender.

Mashatile said the matter was with Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau.

“Let me say this for the record: there are many people I know in this country – some of them have been my friends for more than 20 or 30 years,” said Mashatile. “When I went into politics, they went into business.”

Mashatile said some of these friends were with him in jail during the Struggle.

The deputy president said:

The deputy president said he would not go to a government department and say, “Give my friend a business”.

“That I will not do because I have never done that,” he said.

Mashatile said: “News24 did not say for once they are doing irregular business, anything illegal – They are just, oh no, they are friends of the DP and so what. They are doing their own business, they have remained my friends.”

“I will not do anything that is against the rules and interfere with procurement for the benefit of my friends; that I will not do,” said Mashatile in Parliament.