The top prize in the national lottery, with R2.50 tickets, rolls over each week if it is not won, sometimes rising to R15m or more. Most people buy multiple tickets. That is more than those who drink. If I win, I can buy mealie-meal and potatoes. Gambling is out of control.
Some help is at hand.
South Africans directed more than one percent of their disposable income to gambling last year, said Azar Jammine, chief economist of the private consultancy Econometrix. That amounted to about R10bn, split more or less evenly between casinos and the lottery. The new government legalised gambling in 1996, two years after coming to power, and 26 luxury casinos have been set up. In his opening address at the party's annual conference at Vista University in Bloemfontein, he said urged the wealthy to heed the PAC's call to allow everyone to enjoy the bare necessities of this life in our so-called rich country. They should wake up, and make some little sacrifice - like paying a poverty eradication tax or an employment tax or a water tax.