Chris McGreal : Spending It
This month Rwanda launched a national lottery to raise much-needed revenue. But this is a numbers game which blends aspects of a good old-fashioned lottery – where luck reigns supreme – with betting on the horses.
The scheme was born of desperation. The government had tried scratch cards as a revenue raiser.
They proved popular at first, but then people started to ask each other if anyone had heard of a winner. Almost no one had. And because scratch cards produced instant claims, there was no big announcement on television.
As Rwandans became suspicious, so scratch card sales dropped off.
Then the organisers hit on the idea of a lottery with the winning numbers decided by a method that no one could rig – at least no one in Rwanda – and which allowed the public to see them picked.
The answer was French horse racing stripped of most of the usual betting paraphernalia.
Playing is much the same as any old lottery. Pick three of 20 numbers, place them in the right order and delude yourself into believing that this week you must win.
Tickets cost 150 francs (R3) a shot, about half the price of a small beer in Rwanda – many of which are lined up in bars across Kigali as attention turns to the television for the showing of the race before the news.
The numbers of the first three horses across the finishing line in France decide the lottery winner in Rwanda.
The size of the prizes has nothing to do with the betting odds on individual horses but, like most lotteries, on the number of people prepared to lay a wager.
At the first lottery, the top prize of 600 000 francs (almost R12 000) was split between two winners.
But unlike your average lottery, there is the opportunity to at least try and reduce the chances of losing by looking at the odds of each horse.
Although the running form of each of the horses is available at the ticket booth, hardly anyone studies it.
Many people write down three numbers they have already decided on and walk away with their ticket.
One glance at the form told me that one local player, Yassim, didn’t have much of a hope in the national lottery.
He was approaching Kigali’s new pastime far too much in the spirit of chance.
Unfortunately for Yassim, the first of the numbers he chose was “one”, pegged to a horse called Fou D’Amour.
A quick glance at the horse’s form was not encouraging. Of its last five races the best the horse had managed was fourth place, and it had failed to finish the fifth race. Yassim’s other choices didn’t look too rosy either.
He probably should have picked 11 among his numbers. Its bearer had at least won four of its last five races.
This news was a bit of a shock to Yassim, as it was to the handful of other people standing around the ticket booth. They had wondered what all the numbers were after the horse’s name, but no one had bothered to ask.
One person said he had seen a long explanation on television about how to tell which horses were faster than others but it was too complicated to think about. Another wondered if looking at the horse’s form might not be cheating.
“It’s all luck anyway,” Yassim said philosophically. But he was none too happy as he sat down to watch the race on television. “Which horse did you say won all those races?” he asked.
None of Yassim’s horses were among the first three. And nobody among the dozen people pounding the bar came up with more than one winning number.
They’ll have to start doing better than that, or someone will start spreading the word that the race is rigged.