Festive season illegal gambling warning

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JEREMY MAGGS: As South Africa heads into the festive season, the National Gambling Board [NGB] is sounding the alarm over a surge in illegal online gambling. It’s warning that financially stressed households are being aggressively targeted by unlawful operators.

With December a high-risk period for gambling harm, the board is urging consumers to avoid illegal platforms and seek early help.

Joining us now is Lungile Dukwana, who’s acting chief executive officer of the National Gambling Board. Lungile, a very warm welcome to you. How bad is the situation in your opinion?

LUNGILE DUKWANA: Jeremy, thank you for the opportunity. Well, we would say that the situation is bad in the sense that we are approaching the festive season. I think people would have got their bonuses, people would have got their savings from the stokvels and all of those kinds of things. What we are basically doing is to say that, whilst you will be having those resources you need to have for your family to enjoy with them during the festive season, we must avoid gambling irresponsibly.

For those who are actually gambling, that amount that you are actually getting is for your family, it’s for your loved ones, and to make sure that you progress as an individual. We are basically saying that they must avoid gambling where they gamble on illegal platforms, because the big challenge is also the illegal platforms that are being used.

Those illegal platforms lack safeguards. They lack responsible gambling requirements that we have put in place…

You won’t be certain whether you are going to get your win, even if you actually win. So the warning is basically about that.

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JEREMY MAGGS: You talk about illegal online gambling, which has exploded, and we know this despite repeated warnings. I’ve got to ask you why you think regulation hasn’t kept pace with the scale of the problem?

LUNGILE DUKWANA: Well, I think that the phenomenon of the regulation of online gambling is not just a South African phenomenon. I think broadly there is a lot of illegal gambling that is online, even in countries that have made good progress on it. But I think the South African situation is unique in the sense that the legislation we have is quite old, I think, the 2004 legislation.

We know that the department is actually making efforts, has released a paper where now we are looking at the issue of online gambling as to how it should be. I think there are engagements currently at the various levels, including on the forum of the Provincial Licensing Authorities [PLAs], where we are looking at the issue of the online paper that should be coming out for public comments or for engagement to the public.

So there is progress on that side. But what we should not take away, Jeremy, is that we have legislation now, and that legislation is the 2004 one, and it prohibits online gambling, except for sports betting, and that means that that is the Act that we are implementing currently.

Anybody who is doing something else is acting illegally.

JEREMY MAGGS: Legislation is one thing, but you’ll agree with me that many illegal sites look indistinguishable from licensed operators. Surely, Lungile, that’s a sign that enforcement has fallen behind technology.

LUNGILE DUKWANA: Well, in terms of enforcement, Jeremy, yes, I think that there’s room for improvement there. But I think that the work that we’ve been doing jointly with the PLAs has been quite a lot. We did raids, I think recently in the last two months or so, we did about five raids in the various provinces, some in Limpopo, some in the other areas as well, where we discovered that there was illegal online activity that was actually happening, or illegal physical shops that were actually operating.

We think that the most important thing is to make sure where we pick them up, we do report, and we’re able to close those and seize the equipment that they are using there and open the relevant cases for that kind of work.

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We are doing that kind of work, and we are happy with the progress that we are making thus far. So enforcement will remain one of the most important aspects.

In fact, as the NGB, what we are working towards now, we will be revealing a programme where we are saying gamble responsibly and gamble in South Africa. In that sense, we are meaning that you must avoid gambling on illegal websites.

You must avoid gambling where it is not a South African website. It must be local and it must be legal, so that we can retain all of that money in South Africa and we can contribute to the issues surrounding responsible gambling.

JEREMY MAGGS: But part of the problem is online casinos are illegal, yet South Africans are still seeing their ads openly on social media and WhatsApp every single day. There’s the problem.

LUNGILE DUKWANA: On 1 December, Jeremy, we issued a directive to the PLA, the provinces, that are the licensees, and we said that we are now cracking down on the advertisements. Those advertisements are various kinds of advertisements, but specifically where you are advertising something you are not licensed for, we are taking it down.

Where you are advertising where there are kids, who are not supposed to be the target of your adverts, we are taking it down.

So there is work that we are doing with them. They will be reporting to us almost on a monthly basis in terms of the work that is being done there. So advertisements and those messages, we have also taken it further and said to the public, where they see those billboards that are being advertised, they must report them to us. Where they are getting messages that are unsolicited, that are coming from these illegal gambling sites, they must actually send them to us, and then we are going to be able to act on those particular areas.

So we are stepping up in relation to enforcement and making sure that we deal with the issue of the advertisements, because that issue cannot be acceptable in the kind of society that we want to create.

JEREMY MAGGS: Just a final question then. At what point, in your opinion, or have we reached that point already, where problem gambling stops being a personal responsibility issue and now becomes a public health crisis?

LUNGILE DUKWANA: Well, look, problem gambling is a personal responsibility issue that we can’t take away. But once it requires you to be accessing health services and all the other related issues, it becomes a public health issue. Where we are now, we are doing various studies in terms of problem gambling. The previous study that we did was in 2024, which gave us a certain figure of problem gambling.

In that instance, one of the aspects we discovered was that some of the people who are actually gambling were enticed by some of the advertisements that are coming up. In that particular instance, it means that we have a role to play in terms of making sure that it does not become a public health crisis.

JEREMY MAGGS: I think I’ve got room for just one more question. Have you crunched the numbers? How much revenue is South Africa losing because of illegal operators who are there almost in plain sight?

LUNGILE DUKWANA: Well, the challenge we have with that figure, Jeremy, is we don’t have the figure, because the challenge is that illegal gambling websites, by their nature, are illegal and they are not operating in the open, even with their own financials. So we are not able to monitor that, in a sense. We can only monitor, for example, the unlawful winnings which we deal with, with the banking institutions.

For example, if you gambled with a site that is in Germany, what is going to happen is that we would be interacting with, for example, the South African Reserve Bank and the other banking sectors, and you will have to surrender those winnings to us. Then we do an investigation. Then we determine whether it is unlawful.

In that specific instance, we are beefing up. I think that we have a few memorandums of understanding that we have signed with the banking industry, including Sabric [South African Banking Risk Information Centre], and we are working on one with the Reserve Bank. So we cannot have a definite figure at this particular stage.

JEREMY MAGGS: I’m going to leave it there. I’m sure we’ll talk again in 2026. That’s Lungile Dukwana, who’s the acting chief executive officer of the National Gambling Board. Lungile, thank you very much.

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