The language of gambling is often designed to be persuasive and aspirational. “Winners know when to quit.” “Play smart.” “It could be you.”
These are some of the taglines that suggest control, discipline and foresight, implying that success is simply a matter of knowing when to walk away.
But for millions of South Africans navigating economic precarity, rising debt and emotional strain, this narrative can be misleading.
Gambling rarely begins with excess or recklessness. It begins with hope. But under sustained pressure, hope can steer vulnerable people towards risky choices.
Hidden impacts
SA is seeing patterns of gambling behaviour that resemble public-health challenges — quietly eroding household finances and mental health under the guise of entertainment.
This was the central concern explored in a recent panel discussion titled Retirement at risk: the hidden impact of gambling on your workforce, hosted by Alexforbes in partnership with Arena Events. This brought together policymakers, media leaders and corporate strategists to interrogate the scale, psychology and consequences of the country’s online gambling boom.
Moderated by financial journalist Gugulethu Mfuphi, the discussion — watch the recording below — unpacked how gambling increasingly mirrors patterns typically associated with public health crises.
Unlike traditional gambling, online platforms collapse boundaries of time, space and effort. The casino is no longer a destination. It lives on the phone, in the bedroom, at the workplace.
What often begins as casual entertainment may, for some, evolve into a coping response under sustained stress. As financial pressure intensifies, gambling shifts from pastime to perceived solution.
One of the most arresting moments came from Daily Maverick’s business editor, Neesa Moodley, who estimated that “approximately R1.3-trillion” was spent on gambling in SA over the past year.
The scale of this figure forces a necessary reframing. This is no longer a niche activity confined to recreational spending at the margins of society. It is a systemic cycle unfolding across income bands, households and generations.
With stagnant wages, rising transport and electricity costs, high debt-to-income ratios and multigenerational dependency, gambling increasingly presents itself as an illusion of escape and hope
The discussion made clear that structural financial vulnerability is the breeding ground for this cycle.
With stagnant wages, rising transport and electricity costs, high debt-to-income ratios and multigenerational dependency, gambling increasingly presents itself as an illusion of escape and hope.
For younger adults locked out of housing markets, students misdirecting financial aid, and pensioners stretched beyond fixed incomes, the promise of a win can feel less like indulgence and more like survival.
Disrupting the fantasy
Makashule Gana, South African politician and gambling reform campaigner, warned that the normalisation of gambling masked its cumulative harm. Gana, also a member of the portfolio committees of police, transport, and trade, industry and competition, and chief organiser of Rise Mzansi, addressed the growing concerns around gambling rules.
He said policy and regulation had failed to keep pace with the psychological sophistication of modern gambling platforms, particularly international operators whose economic contributions and regulatory alignment was the subject of ongoing policy debate.
As part of his policy intervention, Gana raised the proposal of a 20% tax on gambling winnings, not as a revenue tool but as a behavioural deterrent, aimed at disrupting the fantasy of “easy money” that sustains addiction.
Without meaningful friction, he cautioned, many gambling platforms were optimised for frequent engagement, which could make self-regulation more difficult for some users.
The dopamine rush associated with the prospect of reward frequently outweighs the reality of the outcome itself
That repetition is driven by behavioural science. As the panel reflected, the brain does not respond most strongly to winning, but to the anticipation of it.
The dopamine rush associated with the prospect of reward frequently outweighs the reality of the outcome itself. A gambler may place a R600 wager and “win” R150, yet experience the interaction as success rather than loss. The reward signal is registered, the deficit ignored.
Moodley reflected on how this distortion played out inside real households. Gambling narratives were often framed around agency and choice, she observed, but rarely accounted for the emotional and economic conditions shaping those choices.
This vulnerability is amplified by the saturation of gambling advertising. From sports sponsorships and prime-time broadcasts to airports, billboards and digital platforms, betting is marketed so extensively that consumers can scarcely move through public space without encountering an invitation to wager.
Stress at work
From a corporate advisory perspective, Belinda Sullivan, head of corporate consulting strategy at Alexforbes, highlighted how debt-related distress increasingly surfaced in the workplace.
She said employers were encountering warning signs through repeated salary advance requests, changing bank details, absenteeism, presenteeism and declining productivity.
What is often treated as individual performance or conduct issues is, in reality, a signal of deeper financial and psychological strain.
This concern intersects with another critical vulnerability, retirement leakage. Data shared during the discussion pointed to alarming withdrawal trends under the two-pot retirement system, particularly among individuals aged 31 to 40.
While the system was introduced as a compassionate intervention, panellists warned that gambling may be one of several contributing factors to early withdrawals, trading long-term security for immediate liquidity.
Betting is marketed so extensively that consumers can scarcely move through public space without encountering an invitation to wager
Credit Gateway’s corporate services and distribution executive Jeremy Chetty emphasised that financial education alone was insufficient if it failed to account for how people made decisions under stress.
Without addressing emotional drivers, fear and immediacy, Chetty argued that financial resilience initiatives would remain reactive, reaching individuals only after damage had already occurred.
As the discussion unfolded, a clear cycle emerged. Financial distress and gambling can, in some cases, reinforce one another, creating a difficult cycle to interrupt. Gambling deepens financial distress.
Anxiety, shame, insomnia and depression follow, often quietly. Over time, individuals are no longer chasing money. They are chasing relief, the fleeting sense of control that accompanies the possibility of escape.
Online gambling accelerates this cycle by design, removing friction, abstracting losses and collapsing the time between wager and outcome, all while heightening the illusion of control even though the odds remain unchanged.
Financial distress and gambling can, in some cases, reinforce one another, creating a difficult cycle to interrupt
What remains is a high-risk emotional transaction conducted under the language of choice and discipline.
This is why slogans such as “winners know when to quit” are not merely misleading, but problematic. They place primary responsibility on the individual while under-emphasising structural factors such as platform design, advertising exposure and regulatory constraints that normalise harm.
Working together
SA’s gambling crisis cannot be addressed through moralising or surface-level regulation alone. As the Alexforbes and Arena Events discussion made clear, it demands coordinated action across policymakers, regulators, financial institutions, employers, unions, educators and media. The R1.3-trillion figure is not just a statistic but a signal of collective strain.
Until gambling is understood not only as entertainment, but also in relation to economic stress, emotional vulnerability and broader systemic pressures, it will continue to masquerade as harmless fun, even as it quietly tightens its grip on households already struggling to breathe.
• About the author: Zipho Dolamo is a freelance business writer who helps individuals and organisations communicate their ideas with purpose and impact.
This article was sponsored by Alexforbes.
