Illegal gambling rampant in Botswana

In their statement to a regional conference held in Swaziland last week, the board partly blamed cell phone companies for taking advantage of the outdated casino and gambling laws, saying: "There are some promotional activities where the operators that offer them do not think that it is gambling - people are encouraged to send the word 'car' by SMS, for example, to win a car or a cash prize, and they get away with it because our legislation has no law to close down the activity."

CCB's Boikanyo Mathiba says about the cellular phone promotions: "Botswana is a cattle country - for people, like me, who do not have cattle - with another draw you stand a chance to win a farm with two boreholes and 200 cattle by texting the word 'Farm'. You can imagine what kind of effect this has on people and they participate without knowing they are gambling.