The proliferation of betting shops across urban Zimbabwe, not only in city and town centres but these days even in suburban shopping centres, where entertainment seems centred on bottle stores, bars and gambling shops, is a cause for concern.
The Lotteries and Gaming Board is responsible for licensing all betting shops and legal betting and can enforce minimum standards.
As against those who complain about the explosion in the number of betting shops, and the damage being done to individuals, families and communities, there are others who note that gambling was always ubiquitous and the main difference these days is that most is now out in the open and regulated, at least to a degree.
At the same time, without legal outlets, online gambling and other external and unregulated gambling would be far worse, so the local licensing can be seen as the lesser of evils by those who oppose gambling.
Colonial Zimbabwe was fairly puritanical about gambling, at least officially. Betting on horse races was legal from the beginning of the colonial rule, the argument being it was not a game of chance but required and rewarded knowledge of form and breeding and thus was a game of skill. At the same time a law was passed banning lotteries.
In 1934, growing pressure saw a curious test of acceptability. All registered voters were sent a questionnaire through the post by the Government statistician to see if they agreed to a state lottery.
Technically it was not a referendum that the opposition was promising if it won an election, but was regarded as such.
The colonial voters wanted a lottery, so they got one.
Except for charity raffles by non-commercial entities such as churches or schools, and they had to give physical prizes not money and in any case needed special approval, other gambling besides the lottery and horse racing were banned.
A small opening came during UDI when tourist resorts in Victoria Falls, Kariba and Nyanga were allowed a tightly controlled casino each.
The net result was a huge horse racing industry and because South African law was similarly restrictive, there was horse racing in a major South African city almost every day of the week, and bookmakers would take bets on these races and the turf clubs in Zimbabwe would run totes on two weekday sets of racing as well as the Saturday Borrowdale races.
It was not difficult to lose a lot of money.
This was the position that the new Government found after independence.
It maintained the very tight control and the restriction for legal gambling to the horses and the State Lottery.
But from the 1990s technology started making this difficult. It started with swipe cards and lottos in other countries and then the whole electronic offering now available.
Sensibly, the Government, even at the risk and then the certainty of the loss of the State Lottery and its support for education, arts and sport in Zimbabwe, and the loss of most horse racing, decided it would be better to accept and control the flood of new gambling rather than have a totally unenforceable ban.
Considering the alternative, of secretive gambling dens cheating and robbing customers as someone with a computer and modem connected to the internet, the decision made a lot of sense, but it still leaves the huge social problems.
As Zimbabwe is an open society, generally people are allowed to ruin their lives if they insist.
They can drink, smoke and gamble and they do, although there is an enforced dividing line between those under and over 18 with as much protection as possible offered to children.
The supporters of State-regulated gambling are correct that things would be a lot worse if it all went underground, but at the same time there perhaps needs to be more care in the licensing, where the Ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage is more concerned about whether a licence-holder will obey the rules rather than downstream effects.
For a start, there appear to be good grounds for not licensing gambling in residential suburbs.
This is not really an industry suitable for much devolution and should perhaps be confined to well-demarcated parts of cities and towns.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
This would also make it easier to ensure that children are not involved and that it is seen less as a social occasion.
It might make it less attractive, but then that would be half the point.
Secondly we need the education, starting off with the sort of warnings we already find on cigarette boxes and bottles of alcoholic drinks.
Money can be made in gambling, but by the licence holders and business owners.
Their customers are betting against the odds and will, over time, lose even if they get the odd spurt of cash.
Some work is being done to help those who have become addicted to gambling, and have lost everything and even gone to jail after stealing money to feed their addiction, but we need to probably do more to help others pick up the pieces.
So we agree with the policy that it is better to control and regulate, rather than ban, but would want to see this legal gambling moved out of residential areas, be subjected to enforced warnings and with more backing for those who are faced with total disaster in their lives.
