South Africa to Ban Online Gambling?

Experts are predicting that the South African government may find that proposed laws to ban online gambling will be unenforceable.

The new National Gambling Bill goes before parliamentary committees for debate and according to IT attorney Reinhardt Buys, the new bill could run into unforeseen problems and is unlikely to eliminate Internet gambling.

This view seems to be backed by the South African Chamber of Business (SACOB) which said: “SACOB believes this provision will be very difficult to police. One only has to consider the high rate of pornographic material and spam that is distributed via the Internet and the difficulty in combating it to be aware that the monitoring of material accessed over the Internet is an extremely difficult task, and as yet no appropriate solutions have been found.”

Online gambling is not just regulated by the Gambling Act, as each of the country's nine provinces also have their own gaming laws, while the Electronics Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act and the Reserve Bank Act touch on gaming by governing foreign exchange transactions.

The new Bill will ban Internet gambling and the advertising of online casinos. Not only the operation of an online casino, but also gambling at such a casino will be banned and criminalised.

A February 2003 survey by the National Gambling Board found that 0.6% of South Africans gamble online (roughly 250 000 people). Merrill Lynch estimates 2001 online gaming revenues to have exceeded $7.106 billion worldwide.