South African Looking to Legalize Online Gambling

The online gaming laws are being evaluated in several countries, and South Africa is no exception. Authorities in South Africa recently announced that they would be examining the online gambling laws in the region as they want to regulate and license these games in order to benefit from the tax revenue generated.

South African authorities have now moved from a policy of prohibition to one of tolerance and regulation. The country plans to regulate, license and tax not only  online casino games but also poker games.

Chief Louw, who is a gambling commissioner in the region commented on the issue, stating that although both the USA and Australia had prohibited gaming, thousands of players in those countries were online gamblers. To him this indicated that prohibition of online gambling did not work – he believes that licensing is the key.

“The big elephant in the room is the online casino in South Africa and we must sharpen our spears. Any one of us can log on at night and place hundreds of bets. I know I do,” he said.

South African authorities will be basing their laws on that of Italy and will use their model of regulating online gambling. The country plans to offers a few online gambling licenses and advertising privileges to a few online casinos. The country proposes to regulate these transactions by setting up banks to refuse transactions from unlicensed South African online casinos.