Just about one year ago the National Gambling Board (NGB) of South Africa announced that it was aware of the developing unregulated Internet Gaming (IG) market and was putting in place a process that would advise policy makers on how to curtail and address the legality of IG in South Africa. As regulators, the NGB holds the view that unlicensed interactive gambling activities significantly undermine national policy, legislation and threaten licensed gambling operations by creating an unregulated and untaxed competition.
The NGB further announced that South Africa is off limits to unlicensed gambling purveyors and that the intention of the legislature to outlaw interactive gambling shall be observed. Severe and harsh penalties will be meted out on perpetrators of illegal gambling activities who may be fined up to R10 million and/or 10 years imprisonment. Perpetrators in this context include individual punters who engage in interactive gambling, unlicensed gambling operators making available such activities, banking institutions, advertising media who are deemed to aid and abet illegal gambling activities or are seen as promoting/facilitating illegal online gambling by flighting such matter.
Since then some R3 million has been confiscated and put in trust. The 5-member Review Commission now has informed Trade and Industry Committee MPs that all online gambling should be regulated and made legal. At last Wednesday’s briefing to Parliament by the Review Commission, Commissioner Stephen Louw said, “The big elephant in the room is internet gambling. The danger is that with the offer of the carrot, it may grow unexpectedly. But already any one of us can log on at night and place hundreds of bets.” He added that total bans on online gambling are difficult to enforce.
Other recommendations by the Commission include limiting the number of initial licences and granting advertising rights to those licence holders, a bigger role for banks in
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enforcement mechanisms and national regulations to cover all forms of online gambling, whether from computers or a cellphones.
Dog racing, horse racing, and poker also came under discussion. The Commission recommended that dog racing should not be legalized because of concerns over the fate of the dogs and overbreeding plus a perceived lack of support from the public. In the case of horse racing the Commission proposed a clear separation of racecourse ownership from that of totes, and tightening of regulations on financing and taxing of bookmakers, totes and other betting offices.
According to the Commission, more research is needed into dice and card games and in particular betting on numbers and symbols in the game of fahfee. Fahfee was said to be now in the control of gangs from mainland China involved in abalone smuggling. Concerns were expressed over the illegal proliferation of poker and electronic bingo machines with unlimited payouts in shopping malls.
Also recommended was the merger of the National Lotteries and the National Gambling boards to give oversight to the National Gambling Policy Council and the establishment of an independent body to distribute lottery funds as grants to charities in an effort to separate the grant-making and compliance enforcement functions. (E-08.15.11)
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