By Zweli Martin Dlamini

Khaya Magagula, the Director of MulaSport Betting (Pty) Ltd secretly met members of the Gaming Board in South Africa and subsequently came back with gambling license, you don’t need to be an investigator to fully understand what happened in Nelspruit resulting to the Gaming Board awarding a license to a company investigated by the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) on corruption and/or money laundering allegations.

Any Board with high regard for the law would have paused the process of renewing MulaSport license after seeking legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General (AG) but because money rules in this country, MulaSport Director Khaya Magagula successfully rushed to influence the renewal of the license.

New companies applied for the license but they were told, the process will commence once Parliament passed the new regulations, that’s how bias and corrupt the Gaming Board is, “it’s a pay as we approve your license Board”.

But as the gambling industry dominates Parliament debates while setting the public discourse agenda, the question as to why the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs was legally empowered to regulate the gambling industry and award licenses comes to the fore.

Indeed, it remains enigmatic how as a country we are made to even talk about the Ministry of Tourism issuing licenses when we have a relevant Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade.

The Gaming Board under the Ministry of Tourism and Environmental Affairs is dominated by alleged corrupt thieves, cashing millions from the gambling companies, the Board sometimes deliberately frustrates the issuing of licenses as a systematic way of extorting money from the investors.

As to why the country empowered the Gaming Board to issue licenses under an irrelevant Ministry nobody knows, licenses must be issued by the relevant Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade.

The Gaming Board is an alleged group of corrupt thieves and must be dissolved as a matter of urgency.