Independence from operators
Operators cannot pay to improve a score on this site, to be added to a list or to remove a complaint from a review page. The ranking is produced by the editorial desk alone, from test accounts opened with the desk's own money, with ZAR deposits and ZAR withdrawals, and from the record of reader reports collected over the year. Advertising is sold on a separate inventory that does not touch editorial pages: a sidebar on long-form guides, a banner on the home page, no in-article placements. The team that handles advertising does not have write access to the review pages and never sees the drafts before publication. If an operator cuts off its affiliate programme after a critical review, the review stays on the site at the same URL and with the same conclusion — losing a commission stream is a smaller cost than losing the trust of readers. Press releases from operators are not published verbatim and are not used as source material without being checked against a live test. The editorial desk does not accept gifts, trips or hosted events from operators or from PR agencies acting for them, and declines free play credit even when it is offered as part of a standard affiliate agreement.
Fact checking
Every claim in a review that carries a number — a payout window, a bonus match, a wagering requirement, a number of games — is checked against the operator's own terms page the morning the review goes live, and against a live test on the editor's account the same week. Where the terms page and the live test disagree, we note the gap and date-stamp the version we saw. The number of games listed in the lobby is counted from a live pull of the game list, not from the operator's marketing page; the figure in the review is the one we counted on that date. Withdrawal windows printed in the review are the ones we saw on a real payout to a South African account, not the maximum window the operator reserves in the terms. Edit notes at the top of each review record every substantive change — a wagering requirement moved from x35 to x40, a payment method removed from the cashier, a licence country changed. The notes stay even after the content below is rewritten so a reader can trace back to the version they saw on an earlier date.
Principles
Short list, long memory. We prefer four honest reviews to forty rushed ones, and the four stay on the site through operator changes, affiliate drama and the rhythm of the search traffic. The list is not padded to look comprehensive and is not reshuffled when a competitor runs a promotion with a bigger affiliate payout. We correct in public with an edit note at the top of the page; the note stays even after the content below has been rewritten, so a reader can trace back to the version they saw on an earlier date. We never recommend an operator we have not tested with our own money and our own ZAR account, and we do not list operators that refuse to answer our editorial questions during the review window. The by-line of the editor who ran the test stays on the review even when the affiliate programme is pulled; the editor's judgement is not sold with the affiliate commission. Readers are the client; operators are the subject.