Two SA lottery millionaires, two tragic deaths: Is there a ‘lottery curse’?
· The South African
Durban schoolteacher Dingiswayo Albert Gumede won R7.45 million in the National Lottery. It was the second-biggest win in South African lottery history at the time.
He and his wife, Nompilo, were preparing to move into a new home in upmarket Durban North with their nine-year-old son.
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Less than two months after his win, a minibus taxi collided with Gumede’s Toyota Corolla in Avoca Hills, killing him.
Paramedics worked on him for over an hour. He never got to move into that house.
A R18 million jackpot, then a high-speed crash
Nhlanhla “Budha” Dlamini, from Ngwelezane in KwaZulu-Natal, won an R18 million Lotto jackpot in 2014.
Two years later, Dlamini was killed instantly when the V8 Mercedes-Benz convertible he was driving collided with a bakkie at high speed and rolled multiple times.
His passenger also died on impact.
Why this SA Lotto winner tragedy still hits so hard
Both men won life-changing amounts of money, and both had their lives cut short not long after.
It’s the same unsettling pattern the world keeps seeing overseas: the jackpot doesn’t buy time, and it definitely doesn’t buy certainty.
I think stories like these are exactly why so many South African winners choose to stay anonymous these days, hey.
There’s something about sudden wealth that seems to invite a spotlight nobody actually asked for.
This isn’t the only place a lottery win has raised hard questions in South Africa.
Our earlier look at what happens to your Lotto prize if you die before claiming it covers another side of the same uncomfortable reality: sudden wealth doesn’t always come with a happy ending.
Do you think there’s truth to the “lottery curse,” or is it just bad luck getting more attention than it deserves?
Let us know in the comments below …