Editorial team

SafeBets is written and checked by a small team that works from published documents: bookmaker terms and conditions, bonus rules, help pages, footer licence notices, provincial and national registers, and game sheets from slot providers. This page explains who does what and how a page gets from a source document to the screen.

Managing editor: Thandi Mokoena

Thandi Mokoena is the managing editor. The name is a pseudonym, and the portrait next to it is a drawn avatar rather than a photograph. We say that openly because a gambling guide should not pretend to have a face it does not have. The managing editor signs off every page, decides what is covered and in what order, and has the final say when two sources disagree.

Writing under a pen name is a choice about privacy, not about accountability. Questions, corrections and complaints reach the whole team through the contact page, and the managing editor answers for what is published.

How the team is organised

The team is described by role rather than by name:

• Research editors collect the source documents for each bookmaker and game: licence notices, the National Gambling Board register, provincial board lists, bonus terms, payment and FICA help pages, and provider game sheets. Every fact that reaches a scorecard is stored with a quote and the address it came from.
• Writers turn those documents into reviews, guides and slot pages in plain South African English, and flag anything the documents do not settle.
• The legal and compliance reader checks pages against the National Gambling Act, the Lotteries Act and the advertising code, and makes sure nothing presents a bookmaker as an online casino, promotes an unlicensed site or suggests that winning is likely.
• The results desk looks after the lotto and lucky numbers pages, where numbers come only from an automatic feed of published results and never from manual typing.

A document-based method

We do not open accounts, deposit, play or withdraw at the bookmakers we cover. Every claim on a review comes from what the operator or a regulator has published, and we say where a document is silent rather than filling the gap. Scores follow the published method on how we rate betting sites: licence, player protection, bonus terms, payments, offer and transparency, each weighted and combined into a score out of 5.

Commercial relationships do not change a score. Some links to bookmakers earn us a commission, which is explained in the advertising disclosure, but only provincially licensed operators can appear in rankings, and the criteria are the same for every one of them.

What the team will not write

• Claims of testing, depositing, playing or withdrawing, because we do not do it.
• Reviews, rankings or links for offshore casinos, mirrors or ways around blocks and self-exclusion.
• Promises that winning is likely, betting systems, or anything aimed at people under 18.
• Invented numbers: bonus amounts, codes, payout times or licence data that no document states.

Corrections and updates

Bonus terms, licences and game lobbies change often. Each page shows the date it was last checked. When a document changes, or a reader points out an error, the research editors re-read the source, the page is updated and the date moves. Pages about gambling also carry the national responsible gambling details on every screen; our responsible gambling page sets out where to find help. Everything here is written for adults aged 18 and over.