The Western Cape and other provinces warn that the new National Gambling Amendment Bill risks trampling their constitutional powers. The bill targets a booming illegal market. The long-delayed overhaul of South Africa’s gambling laws has hit a political fault line.
Provinces are pushing back against South Africa’s Gambling Bill, challenging the national government’s attempt to seize control. Officials say the bill will tighten consumer protection. It will modernize enforcement tools and close loopholes that offshore and illegal operators have exploited for years.
Provincial regulators argue that numerous clauses would centralize control in Pretoria at their expense. Shared-power sectors may see provinces clash with the national government over its authority.
DTIC officials told lawmakers at recent Western Cape hearings that the bill aims to tighten punter protection. It also seeks to improve enforcement and resolve long-running deadlocks in the country’s gambling structures.
The DTIC argues that the existing framework is badly out of date. Lawmakers anchored it in the 2004 Act and never brought the 2008 amendment into force. Digital betting, electronic bingo, and online casinos now look very different from the landscape legislators imagined two decades ago.
The department told Western Cape MPs that the bill will consolidate data from all legal gambling modes nationwide. It described this as a major step toward implementing the 4th Industrial Revolution and enhancing regulatory oversight.
The push comes against a backdrop of mounting concern about the scale of unregulated gambling. National Treasury analysis suggests illegal online operators may siphon as much as R50 billion a year from South Africa’s economy. They pay little or no tax and provide no formal consumer safeguards.
