Times Of Swaziland: HOW SWAZI LOTTO CRASHED

HOW SWAZI LOTTO CRASHED
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BY THEMBINKOSI MAVIMBELA on 07/02/2018 00:51:00


MBABANE – Did government have a hand in the closing down of Swazi Lotto?
Swazi Lotto was a gambling company which came about around 1990 but eventually
ceased operations.
According to the Prime Minister, Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini, in his book
Inspiration:
The Personal Journey of the Prime Minister of Swaziland, the company stopped
operations after government ceased to allow it to advertise in the media.
Dlamini says the exclusion damaged the company’s marketing strategy and it
soon folded.
Explaining why government decided not to allow the company to advertise in its
media, Dlamini says, “This was called Swazi Lotto and would have been entirely
acceptable but for it starting to use and target children in its promotional
activities.”
The premier describes the company’s gambling form as socially regressive. He
explains that the odds against winning a major prize were huge and the cost of a
ticket to the poor, with only a tiny chance of winning anything, was greater
than that for a rich person.
In his book, Dlamini says gambling is an addiction which spells financial
disaster. He speaks of gambling as addictive and says many personal lives and
relationships have been damaged by the addiction. He says over a long-term of
consistent and regular gambling, the odds are routinely stacked against the
gambler.
“Whether it is reviving the thrill of potentially winning a huge sum of money,
or a compulsion to regain past losses, this is an addiction that can grab hold
of an individual’s personality to the extent that all he thinks about is
gambling,” the book reads.
Although not certain, Dlamini assumes that civil servants were banned from
frequenting casinos in the 1990s because they were being protected from
addiction. He says local casinos were only promoted to tourists, the rich and
the high-spending. He added that local casinos lost their popularity in the
mid-1990s after South Africa legalised this form of commercial activity.