Johannesburg — AS AN employed person I can afford the luxury of wondering what it would be like to win a million bucks. I, and other middle-class South Africans, can occasionally spend R5 or even R10 on a few rows of Lotto tickets. It doesn't hurt.

But what if you do not have a job and that process of wondering about untold riches is much more than a wishful thought?

What if spending that R5 is the equivalent to selling your soul to the devil? It is perhaps not possible to imagine the desperation that accompanies those numbers and the prayers that accompany watching the multi-coloured balls being spat out of a machine.

This week, Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin announced that the introduction of a daily lottery had been temporarily halted. He was quite emphatic though that the present twice-weekly draws would continue as usual.

The reason for holding back on the November 11 introduction has much to do with Erwin's colleague, Zola Skweyiya. As the Minister of Social Development, Skweyiya has first-hand experience of the utter devastation gambling - from casinos to the Lotto - has wrought on many, many South Africans' lives.

He has trampled through the rural Eastern Cape; has seen the distended stomachs of children and the fear of death that haunts their parents' eyes.

Skweyiya, who has emerged as the poor people's champion, has also questioned the disbursement of Lotto money, which is carved up among various charitable causes. Has enough, he has asked, been going to the poor and hungry?

These questions have made for uncomfortable scrutiny.

Joe Foster, chairman of the National Lotteries Board, explained this week that R1,6-billion had been raised for good causes since the inception of the lottery. About R500-million had been disbursed since then. Another R1.1-billion was, he said, earning interest.

A list of beneficiaries who received money from the board between April 1 2001 and March 31 this year shows that Eastern Cape charities - this includes everything from old age homes, animal welfare organisations and learning centres to Christian organisations and family services - received just over R10-million.

In comparison, the Blue Bulls Rugby Union received R1.1-million and Athletics South Africa just over R1.2-million.

It is perhaps time to admit that the lottery is not working and that it has hurt the very poor - the people whose needs the SA government has to address - the most.

It is also time to admit that the formal introduction of gambling, and this includes the Lotto, has caused too many of our country's poor to invest their souls in a game of chance and that too many of them sit praying that they will be the millionaire at the end of the Road2Riches show.

It is time to admit that we are in danger of becoming a nation of chancers and hucksters who believe riches will come through picking six random numbers, and that the poor have given up hope of finding jobs. Instead they form snaking queues at corner stores that resemble the patient lines we saw during the 1994 election.

But still Erwin's department contemplates another addition to the platter of gambling in South Africa. It is a shameful abrogation of responsibility.

In an egalitarian society, we would not be concerned about those who played the Lotto. We would easily toss R5 Uthingo's way and jokingly commiserate about never winning. We would joke about our fanciful dreams of tossing jobs and flying around the world on an eternal holiday.

But the lottery dream has turned stale and sour, and Erwin is arrogant in not having the grace to admit to this.

He has said his intervention is merely a temporary delay though; something he described as a "reflection period".

But what will be reflected on - that the lottery and other forms of gambling that have been introduced over the past few years have created more misery than wealth? I think not.

Before Erwin makes a decision about the daily lottery, he should take a drive or let his driver take him around a poor neighbourhood on a Saturday afternoon to watch the queues of the hopeless at the Lotto machines. Perhaps, once he sees the faces of the poor, he will think differently.