South Africa’s internet industry body has warned that blocking websites, including a fresh push to shut out offshore online gambling, must rest on a clear law rather than a regulator’s say-so
The Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA), the official body representing South African internet providers, published a position paper on 2 July 2026 setting out how, and when, internet blocking should be allowed
The paper responds to a formal request from the National Gambling Board, which has asked the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies to implement internet blocking against offshore illegal online gambling platforms targeting South Africans
Not against blocking, against doing it badly
ISPA accepts that some illegal content may warrant blocking, but says it should never be done by administrative order alone
“Any disruption of internet services to South Africans should be done only as part of a clear legislative framework that balances the right to communicate against potential harm,” said Sasha Booth Beharilal, ISPA chair
The concern is not new. South Africa has flirted before with blocking the internet to curb online gambling, and ISPA argues the technical tools on offer are blunt
Three blunt instruments
The paper walks through the main ways to block a site and the cost of each. Domain name blocking is the easiest to deploy but the easiest to bypass. IP address blocking risks catching unrelated sites in the net: ISPA cites an Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) report showing one European block inadvertently disabled more than 500,000 websites. Deep packet inspection, the most thorough, is invasive, costly, associated with autocratic governments, and routinely defeated by a VPN
Five conditions
ISPA proposes five principles for any blocking regime: it should be directed by a court rather than an administrator; disclosed publicly; time-limited and subject to periodic review; achievable without forcing providers to re-engineer their networks; and funded through fair cost allocation rather than dumped on ISPs
The intervention lands as the industry, which recently marked three decades of organised self-regulation, tries to keep a legitimate crackdown on illegal gambling from hardening into a precedent for wider online censorship
