BRYAN PEARSON, Cape Town | Thursday 12.45pm.
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki launched South Africa’s first national lottery on Wednesday during a visit to the destitute Langa township, saying the scheme would raise billions of rands for poverty relief.
The lottery is expected to raise about R13 billion in five years for good causes, Mbeki said at a small butchery, one of the 5000 places across the country selected to sell the tickets from Thursday.
The president did not buy a ticket himself and joked: “I know if I take one I will win it and then everyone will think it was rigged.”
The lottery is run by the Uthingo Consortium which estimates that about 500000 players will win prizes ranging from about R25 rand to several million rand every week.
The consortium expects to have sold R60 million worth of tickets, which cost R2,50 each, before the first draw, due on March 11.
Uthingo is 70 percent South African-owned and includes US-based GTech Holdings and lottery organisers, the UK-based Camelot Group and the Australian Tattersall’s Group.
Uthingo beat two wholly-South African owned groups to the licence for the lottery, expected to become among the 20 largest in the world. –AFP