Winikhaya 'unlawful lottery'

Bloemfontein - The National Lotteries Board won its appeal on Monday against a Pretoria High Court judgment which held that the televised "Winikhaya" competition was a promotional competition.

The Supreme Court of Appeal held that the Winikhaya competition, as it was presently being administrated and implemented, was not a promotional competition but an unlawful lottery.

Winikhaya is promoted by the SA Children's Charity Trust as a competition broadcast on television by the SABC.

The trust promotes and raises funds for charity and charitable causes.

The SCA found that the Winikhaya competition, as presently administrated and implemented by the trustees of the trust, was not a promotional competition as contemplated in the Lotteries Act and therefore an unlawful lottery.

The appeal was upheld with costs.

In response the SA Children's Charity Trust said it would lodge an application on Tuesday at the Constitutional Court to defend its Winikhaya campaign.

Winikhaya project manager Kimon Phitidis said the National Lotteries Board had brought an application at the Pretoria High Court in 2006 to close Winikhaya, because it said it was operating unlawfully.

"In November last year, the Pretoria High Court dismissed the application. They appealed the decision at the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein the same month."

After the Supreme Court on Monday overturned the ruling made by the Pretoria High Court, Phitidis said: "We will be filing an application at Constitutional Court to challenge the judgment." According to Phitidis the Trust was South Africa's largest grouping of children's charities.

It had raised millions of rands in support of children all over South Africa who were abandoned, abused, disabled or suffering from life threatening illnesses such as cancer and HIV/Aids, he said.

- Sapa

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