As South Africa edges toward the regulation of online gambling, Wayne Lurie, an attorney specialising in technology and gambling law at Lurie Inc, considers the implications of a regulated market in the country.

Wayne Lurie

DURING August, the chairperson of the National Gambling Board (“the NGB”), Professor Linda de Vries, was quoted in the media as stating that interactive gambling (the words “interactive gambling” being the language of the South African legislator, intended to encompass all manner of devices used to participate online) would be a licensed activity by as early as November of this year.

Obviously this would be a most welcome development to all those interactive gambling operators that have viewed the South African market with interest, since the first indication that the market would be opened to licensed operators in November, 2004.

It is worthwhile, at this juncture where South Africa once again stands on the cusp of interactive gambling regulation, to review the long road of starts and stops that have been the hallmark of interactive gambling licensing reform in South Africa. Although practically South Africa has a long history of land-based gambling going back to the 1970s, in “homelands” within its geographical boundaries, gambling was only legalised for the first time under the first democratic government in 1996. A reform of gambling laws took place in 2004 and this was the first time that the concept of interactive gambling was recognised.

The recognition came in the form of a two-pronged approach. Firstly, interactive gambling was expressly prohibited in the form of section 11 of the National Gambling Act, 2004 (“the Act”). However, at the same time a schedule to the Act prescribed transitional provisions, which provided that a committee would be formed by the NGB to advise the Minister of Trade and Industry on measures to regulate interactive gambling within a year of November, 2004 (the date of promulgation of the Act). The same transitional provisions provided that the Minister would pass legislation to that effect with a further year after receiving the report.

Read the full article in the current issue of InterGaming Law.