South African Gambling Law

Each day, many players from South Africa visit online casinos to meet their gambling needs. Unfortunately, many of these players are unaware of current gambling laws. There are strict laws in place that pertain to how players access online casinos and these laws should be reviewed by any player that plans to gamble in an online casino. At this time, online gambling is prohibited in South Africa. This does not directly apply to players, but the law does restrict any establishment from opening and operating online gambling activities within South Africa. This means that any player that wishes to play online will have to find a casino that is operated off shore to engage in real money play online.

Back in 1965, The 1965 Gambling Act made all forms of gambling illegal for South African residents. This law stayed in effect for many years. In 1994, the laws changed when gambling was made legal by the government. At this time, the government started to license and regulate casinos and also introduced a new national lottery top residents.

Things changed again with the National Gambling Act 2004. This made it illegal to gamble online. Players could still visit land based casinos in South Africa, but were prohibited from engaging in any online gambling, with sports betting being the exception. This Act was the cause of much dispute and in 2008, another Act was formed to legalise online gambling. However, this Act has never come into power because there were so many people against it.

At this time, online gambling is still considered illegal and no operator can offer gambling services players within the country. To engage in online gambling, players will have to find an off shore casino that caters tit eh needs of South African players. When the laws changed and online gambling was prohibited, a number of online casinos refused to accept cash players from this location. However, there are still many great choices that are available and there are no penalties enforced upon individual players who gamble online.

It is believed that the laws will soon change again and the residents of South Africa are hopeful that online gambling will be legalised. If this happens, South Africa could be the home to many new online casinos that offer awesome games and great monetary rewards for playing online.