REMOTE GAMBLING: DA BILL TABLED

REMOTE GAMBLING: DA BILL TABLED

• 17 April 2024
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

The DA’s Dean Macpherson has tabled a Remote Gambling Bill, which has been sent to the National Assembly’s Trade, Industry & Competition Committee for post-elections processing. This comes 18 months after an explanatory summary was gazetted outlining what was envisaged at the time – and calling for public comments.

According to a memorandum on the Bill’s objects, among other things it seeks to:

• provide ‘a legal basis for the regulation and control of all remote gambling activities’
• ‘promote the development of a responsible remote gambling industry’ in South Africa
• ensure that the privacy of a player is respected;
• prevent and protect minors and other vulnerable persons from being exposed to the negative effects of gambling, and
• ‘prevent remote gambling from being a source of, or associated with, crime or disorder, or being used to support crime, disorder or money laundering’.

This is noting that:

• the National Gambling Amendment Act, 2008 (addressing some of these issues) has yet to be commenced, and that
• draft interactive gambling regulations released in 2009 for public comment have yet to be finalised.

Very few private members’ Bills have passed the desirability test to which all pieces of proposed new legislation are subjected in the National Assembly committees concerned. To date, not one DA Bill has progressed beyond that step in the parliamentary process. However, quite possibly the content of some of these Bills has influenced the drafting of legislation later introduced by the executive. 

• Bill
• September 2022 explanatory summary
• National Gambling Amendment Act, 2008 (not yet in force)
• draft interactive gambling regulations, 2009 (not yet finalised)

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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