Will This Be The Year For Online Gambling After All?
Heads up, you have to have seen or heard about this. Incredibly, the start and stop action of South Africa legislators with respect to legalizing online casinos and online gambling in general looks to be back on the agenda. Believe it or not, a new and improved (revised) Remote Gambling Bill is due to be heard before Parliament in February.
As you probably recall, action on legalizing online gambling in South Africa came to a grinding halt last year. In fact, some critics went so far as to outright blame the Department of Trade and Industry. Actually, some even were making the case that the Department was deliberately taking steps to delay any sort of legalization. Call it a territorial grab or politics as usual, the point is that quite a few hopes were dashed back in 2014 by the lack of decisive action on the part of Parliament.
However, all that might turn out to be a moot point if the revised Remote Gambling Bill is actually heard. This time around, the Remote Gambling Bill is being re-gazetted to Parliament by Geordin Hill-Lewis. Recall that Hill-Lewis is shadow minister of trade and industry for the Democratic Alliance.
This time around, Hill-Lewis is full of confidence that his efforts will prove successful. Here is how this will play out. Under South African legislative procedures, the bill moves from Parliament to the Portfolio Committee on Trade and Industry. This ensures the bill must be at a minimum debated. At the same time, Hill-Lewis tweaked the bill with a few amendments to make it more palatable to Committee members.
Explaining some of the details of the revised Remote Gambling Bill, Hill-Lewis went on record stating: “This time, were are proposing to split the licensing responsibility between the provinces and the National Gambling Board”. Note that this will keep overall responsibility at the national level while at the same time allowing each province the authority to decide for themselves whether or not to issue remote gambling licenses.
Also, Hill-Lewis is quick to point out that the changes to the Bill were specifically worded to maintain compliance with existing legislation. In this case, Hill-Lewis is referring to the Final Intelligence Centre Act. This Act is all about possible fraud and money laundering issues.
Conclusion: its a brand new year and maybe this time the South African government will go ahead and finally legalize online gambling within the country. Perhaps by looking at possible revenue gains for state coffers, the legislators can go ahead and make the right choice.