One government board with no members for 11 years

South Africa’s National Gambling Board (NGB) has not had members since 2014, and the board selection process has yet to be concluded.

Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau recently explained in response to a Parliamentary question from DA MP Toby Chance that the process of selecting members to serve on the NGB is underway.

The NGB, overseen by Tau’s department, is tasked with leading the regulation of the gambling industry in the fulfilment of the National Gambling Act.

The board must ensure South Africa has an effectively regulated and supervised gambling industry that upholds domestic, continental and internationally recognised compliance standards.

Crucially, the NGP is tasked with providing oversight over licensing and monitoring of licensees by provincial licensing authorities to ensure that national norms and standards are applied uniformly throughout the country.

South Africa has a robust and highly lucrative gambling industry, with R1.1 trillion worth of wagers placed in the 2023/24 financial year, a 40.2% increase from the turnover generated during the previous financial year.

Gross gambling revenue (GGR) amounted to R59.3 billion, a 25.7% increase from the previous year.

The report further revealed that most of this revenue came from betting, which generated 60.5% of industry GGR at R35.9 billion.

The NGB, therefore, plays a crucial role in combating illegal gambling in South Africa, which has boomed over the past few years alongside the rise in popularity of online gambling.

Tau said in the board’s 2023/24 annual report that this surge in illegal online gambling activities and the widespread advertising of gambling, often targeting vulnerable populations, have presented new challenges for regulators.

Despite the prevalence of this threat, the NGB has been without members for over a decade.

This is because the NGB’s members resigned shortly after the then Trade, Industry and Competition Minister, Rob Davies, placed the board under administration in 2014.

According to News24, this came after a forensic audit into maladministration and wasteful expenditure at the public entity.

GroundUp reported that the NGB’s members resigned two months after the board was placed under administration.

Since then, the NGB has not had members, with Tau confirming in October 2024 that positions on the board had been advertised. However, no members have been selected as of yet.

GroundUp further reported that the investigation that led to this state of affairs has also not yet been concluded.

NGB’s financial performance

Despite the instability and lack of NGB leadership, the board finds itself among the few public entities to have obtained consecutive clean audit opinions for nearly a decade.

Between its 2019/20 and 2023/24 financial years, the NGB received a clean audit opinion and mostly ran at a surplus.

With the exception of the 2023/24 financial year, in which the NGB recorded a R1.18 million deficit, the board has recorded consecutive surpluses over the past five available financial years.

The 2023/24 deficit resulted from the NGB’s R279.5 million expenditure exceeding its R278.3 million revenue.

The higher expenditure this year is primarily related to spending incurred against professional and consulting fees, which constituted 74% of expenditure.

These consulting fees were paid to the National Central Electronic Monitoring System operator, which provides LPM monitoring services on behalf of the NGB. 

Personnel expenditures accounted for 18% of the entity’s total spending, followed by administrative expenses, travelling and subsistence costs, other operating expenses, and depreciation, which accounted for 4%, 2%, 1%, and 1%, respectively.

Despite the NGB’s significant budget deficit in 2023/24, the entity explained that this amount is cash-backed as the expenditure was incurred in the current financial year, while the revenue was received and committed in previous financial years.