| | |  | Last Updated: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 |  | | | Sex and Gambling
- Saturday, 11 Feb 2006
It wasn’t too long ago that a person residing in South Africa had to travel all the way to neighboring Swaziland if he wanted to indulge in some gambling and visits to local strip clubs. In 1994, all of this has changed with South Africa’s transition to democracy. Strip clubs and gambling which were banned until a decade ago under apartheid are now big business here thanks to a booming economy and the more liberal attitudes that came with the dawn of democracy and an end to international isolation.
Lolly Jackson, chief executive and founder of South Africa’s most famous chain of strip clubs called Teazers said, “The old Dutchmen in power had very narrow minds. When we got democracy people realised this is what they want to do”. Under stringent apartheid-era censorship laws, magazines were forced to cover breasts with stars, bare legs on a packet of stockings were branded pornographic and casinos were banned by a government dominated by conservative Afrikaners, descendents of Dutch and French settlers.
These days sex and gambling are a commodity like any other, and 80 percent of the population gamble regularly if you include playing the national lottery. Auret, chief executive of the Casino Association of South Africa said, “We have the most liberal constitution in the world so people are simply doing what they like to do”.
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