Strengthening South Africa’s National Lottery governing act

Genesis was contracted by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) to provide a regulatory impact assessment of selected provisions identified in the Lotteries Act.

These provisions included: online lotteries, having one national regulator for lotteries and gambling, enforcement of lotteries legislation, the National Lottery operational model, the structure and role of distributing agencies, how to make proactive funding more effective and prevent funding leakages, and the successful implementation of multi-year funding.

The Lotteries Act, No. 57 of 1997, as amended, provides the legal foundations for the National Lottery and establishes the procedures by which revenues raised should be distributed to good causes. The Lotteries Amendment Act No 32. of 2013 was enacted in 2015 to update the legislation with best practice. However, challenges have arisen because of gaps in the legislative framework and sometimes ineffective implementation of the governance framework. There is widespread perception among stakeholders that there are governance weaknesses in the system.

The study (i) assessed the severity of the issues identified, examining available quantitative and qualitative evidence; (ii) identified and recommended the preferable option to address the identified regulatory issue; and (iii) quantified, where possible, the expected benefits, costs, risks and overall impact of the intervention.

Genesis presented its final recommendations to representatives of the dtic and the National Lotteries Commission for consideration.