Senator Fezeka Dlamini has called out the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs over the growth of the gambling industry in the country, saying it has surged ahead of the systems meant to protect the public from addiction and other gambling-related harm.
In an interview with this publication on Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, Dlamini said the rapid spread of online betting should concern government, particularly in a country already grappling with unemployment, poverty and growing pressure on mental-health services.
Her intervention comes as health practitioners at the National Psychiatric Referral Centre report gambling among the problems increasingly presenting among patients seeking psychological support, including some experiencing suicidal thoughts.
Dlamini said the situation was particularly troubling because the Gaming Control Act of 2022 already places responsibilities on the State to monitor the socio-economic effects of gambling and provide mechanisms to address gambling-related harm.
Her concern is that while the industry has expanded, those protections have not developed at the same pace.
“The law exists. The systems do not,” she said, arguing that there was a widening gap between the protections promised under the country’s gambling legislation and what existed on the ground.
The Gaming Control Act gives the Gaming Control Board responsibility for regulating gambling, monitoring its socio-economic impact and conducting research into gambling addiction. It also provides for support for people affected by gambling-related harm.
Yet several of those protections remain incomplete. The country still does not have a central monitoring system capable of tracking online betting activity, while the rehabilitation mechanism envisaged under the law has also not become operational.
Dlamini said government could not facilitate the growth of gambling without putting equal energy into protecting people exposed to its risks.
“The ministry needs to be called out because government should be ensuring that people are protected, but we have not seen the same vigour in ensuring those protections as we have seen in allowing the industry to grow,” she said.
She argued that gambling should not be viewed simply as a revenue-generating industry, but within the country’s wider social and economic circumstances.
Dlamini said gambling might operate differently in wealthier economies, where consumers generally have greater disposable income and large tourism markets provide a sizeable customer base. Eswatini, she argued, faced a different reality.
“Gambling works best in some of the richest societies with high tourism numbers and people who have money to spend. For a country like ours, with so many socio-economic challenges, this is pushing our people to the edge,” she contended.
Unemployment and poverty, she said, were particularly important to the debate because people under financial pressure could increasingly view betting as a possible source of income rather than entertainment.
She warned that digital gambling had made that danger harder to contain, particularly among young people who can access betting products directly from their mobile phones.
Her argument mirrors concerns emerging elsewhere in Southern Africa about the relationship between financial pressure and gambling.
In South Africa, for example, gambling turnover reached R1.5 trillion during the 2024/25 financial year, while gross gambling revenue reached R75 billion.
Betting accounted for the largest share of that revenue as online platforms expanded rapidly, with financial need found to be playing a significant role in gambling behaviour, as 56% of surveyed bettors saying they gambled because they needed money.
While those figures cannot be applied directly to the country, the senator said the underlying warning was relevant: where households face severe economic pressure, gambling risks being viewed as a route out of hardship rather than recreation.
That, she argued, makes effective regulation and consumer protection even more important.
Gaming Control Board Chairperson Mandla Dlamini has previously acknowledged that government lacks the systems and human resources necessary to fully implement the legislation, particularly its monitoring requirements.
“Government is behind. We lack systems and resources, including human resources, to implement the law, especially the monitoring part,” he stated.
He said the ministry was working towards establishing a central monitoring system but did not yet have the technical capacity to connect to online gambling platforms.
The ministry has also been working on regulations intended to strengthen implementation of the 2022 Act. Its 2023 annual report stated that draft regulations had been submitted to the attorney general’s office and discussed in several meetings, although approval remained pending.
For Senator Dlamini, however, the delay is increasingly difficult to defend when gambling products are already widely accessible.
“The fact that they don’t even have proper data or do not fully follow the law is outright disappointing,” she said.
The senator has raised similar concerns before. Last year, she questioned why the Gaming Addiction Fund provided for under the law was still not operational, warning Parliament about the growing reach of gambling, particularly among young people.
Tourism and Environmental Affairs Minister Jane Mkhonta-Simelane acknowledged at the time that the fund remained non-operational.
More than a year later, the senator said reports of gambling-related cases presenting at the National Psychiatric Referral Centre strengthened the case for urgency.
Government’s figures also illustrate how the commercial side of the industry has continued to develop while some of its protection mechanisms remain unfinished.
The Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs’ end of year performance report for the 2024/25 financial year shows that E22.93 million in gaming levies was collected between April and December 2024 from lottery operators, bookmakers and short-term gaming promotions.
During the same period, the Gaming Board granted two new bookmaker licences, renewed another for 12 months, inspected 10 gaming operations and issued 42 short-term gaming permits.
Only 45 people voluntarily enrolled in exclusion programmes during the period.
Parliament’s portfolio committee on tourism and environmental affairs has also raised concerns that gaming levies were being deposited into the Government Consolidated Fund rather than directly assisting people affected by gambling addiction.
The committee recommended that the ministry ensure full compliance with the law, including establishing the fund intended to support people affected by gambling addiction.
…WE ARE LETTING YOUNG PEOPLE DOWN
Senator Fezeka Dlamini says government is letting young people down twice: first through an economy that is failing to create enough opportunities for them and again by failing to adequately protect them from an increasingly accessible gambling industry.
She said high unemployment left many young people with limited prospects of earning an income, making the promise of quick money through betting particularly concerning.
That vulnerability, she argued, has been compounded by the movement of gambling onto smartphones. Betting is no longer confined to casinos or physical outlets where access can be controlled.
A mobile phone, internet connection and access to money can now place gambling products directly in the hands of young people.
“Young people are now on these digital platforms and we know that the country has some of the highest unemployment rates globally. With limited economic opportunities, many of them can easily become vulnerable to gambling. Government should be ensuring their protection,” she stated.
The nature of the products available online adds another dimension, she said, citing crash-style games such as Aviator which allow players to repeatedly place bets in rapid cycles. A player stakes money as a multiplier rises and must withdraw before the game ‘crashes’. If it crashes first, the stake is lost. A new round begins shortly afterwards.
The senator said such accessibility requires regulation capable of keeping pace with the technology and the consequences, she argued, can no longer be discussed only as a future risk. She argued that the prevailing situation on gambling addiction was enough reason for government to urgently investigate the scale of gambling-related harm.
At present, the absence of comprehensive local data makes the scale of the problem difficult to quantify. That information gap is itself part of the senator’s criticism.
“Without reliable research into gambling behaviour, addiction and its socio-economic consequences, government cannot establish how much households are spending, which groups are most vulnerable, how many people are experiencing addiction or how rapidly the problem is growing,” she said.
She argued that the ministry had demonstrated that it could licence operators, collect levies and facilitate the industry’s development and now needed to demonstrate the same urgency in implementing the safeguards intended to accompany that growth.
“We already have so many socio-economic ills. This is pushing our people over the edge and at a time where betting can now take place in seconds from a mobile phone, government,” she insisted.
