Last updated: July 2026. Entertainment and general-interest reading only.
Every South African site that mentions fafi publishes the same 36 symbols. Almost none of them tell you where the game came from, who brought it, or why a number is tied to a dream in the first place. That gap is what this page is for — a genuine history, with sources you can follow.
Fafi is a Chinese numbers game that arrived in South Africa with Chinese migrants in the early 1900s, took root among mine workers in the old Transvaal, and became one of the most enduring features of township life. It has been running for well over a century. It has also never been legal here, which is a part of the story most write-ups skip.
The Name Comes From a Cantonese Flower Game
The word itself is the first clue, and it points straight to southern China.
Fafi — also written fah-fee or fa-fi — comes from the Cantonese faa wui (花會), rendered in Mandarin as hua hui and sometimes called Chi-Fah (Mandarin zi hua). Literally it is something like "flower gathering" or "flower assembly." It was a widely played gambling game in China through the 19th and 20th centuries, built on the same core idea South Africans would recognise instantly: a single winning number drawn from a fixed set, with each number carrying a name or an image.
Early South African writing on the game was frank about not knowing this. One frequently quoted description called fah-fee "a modification of roulette, a Chinese game," adding that "the meaning of the word Fa-Fi is unknown by those who are interested in the game." The etymology was recovered later.
The game picked up local names as it spread. Mo-china, machina and mochaina are all in use, and in isiZulu it is umchina — simply "the Chinese." Older official documents use ichina. They all refer to the same thing.
Arrival: Chinese Migrants and the Gold Mines
Fafi came to South Africa in the early 1900s, carried by Chinese migrants, and it was first played by gold miners in the old Transvaal. That is the account given in the academic literature on township gambling, and it fits the period exactly — the Witwatersrand gold industry was importing labour on a large scale in the years after the South African War, and Chinese indentured mine workers arrived from 1904.
From the mines the game moved into the townships that grew around Johannesburg and the Reef, and by the middle of the century it was established enough to attract serious study. The earliest substantial academic treatment is Laura Longmore's "A Study of Fah-Fee," published in the South African Journal of Science in July 1956 — a seventy-year-old record of a game that people still play the same way today.
Fafi is also not unique to South Africa, which is itself evidence of its Chinese origin. In Trinidad, the closely related game Whe Whe arrived with Chinese migrants in the nineteenth century and shares the defining features: a single winning number between 1 and 36, a symbol attached to each number, a strong tradition of choosing numbers from dreams, and a "banker" who ran the game and was known to help regular players in difficulty. Two Chinese diasporas, two continents, one game.
How the Game Actually Works on the Street
The mechanics are simple and have barely changed.
Players bet on one number between 1 and 36. Each number carries an image. The winning number is delivered by hand, in person, at a set place and time.
The delivery is the part outsiders find remarkable. The game is mobile: the money and the winning number travel in a car — described in the literature as a luxury vehicle with tinted windows, or in more recent fieldwork as a large truck with bulletproof glass — that drives a fixed route through the township and stops at designated stations. A station might be a shop, a house, a street corner, a large rock or a particular tree. In many townships and villages the game runs up to three times a day: morning, afternoon and evening.
The people who run the route are known as the fafi man. In Brittany Birberick's fieldwork in Jeppestown, east of the Johannesburg city centre, they travel two to a vehicle, on set routes, and are Chinese South Africans or more recent Chinese migrants — the same community connection that has defined the game since it arrived.
Payouts on the street game are commonly quoted at 26 to 1 or 28 to 1, varying by area — for a bet on 1 number in 36.
The 36 Symbols and the Dream Tradition
This is where fafi stopped being a Chinese import and became something South African.
Each number carries an image, and the images read like a portrait of urban life. Some are ordinary — shoes, an egg, a cat, a car, birds flying. Others are far darker: a dead woman, fire, police, a thief, a drunk man. The interpretations that grew around them draw on Zulu dream interpretation, and the set as a whole can be read as a running commentary on the difficulty of navigating life in South Africa, then and now.
The skill players describe is not picking numbers but reading. You interpret your dreams and the events of your day, and convert them into a number. Birberick's work in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory places this alongside traditional healing and diagnostic practice — learning how to dream, and how to interpret what you dreamed, is treated as a genuine competence rather than a superstition.
Players are also meticulous record-keepers. Birberick found people recording winning numbers in notebooks and on scraps of paper, some for up to four years, before claiming to understand the patterns in them. Whatever else it is, fafi is a game people take seriously and study hard.
Our Fafi Dream Guide sets out the full 36-symbol list as it is used in South Africa today.
The Part Nobody Writes Down
Here is the finding that changes how you should read every "fafi prediction" page on the internet, and it comes from published research rather than from us.
When researchers studying gambling in Gauteng townships pressed players on how the winning number is actually chosen, the answers were striking. Many participants said they did not know, and appeared to find the question beside the point. Others said plainly that the banker chooses the winning number himself — in his own interest, and with knowledge of which numbers had been backed that day. Across successive workshops there was general agreement on this.
In other words: the street game is not a random independent draw of the kind the 36-number grid implies. It is a number selected by the person holding the money. That is not a rumour we are passing on; it is what players themselves told researchers.
It has one honest consequence worth stating: past results cannot tell you what comes next. In a game where the outcome is chosen rather than drawn, patterns in a notebook are a record of one person's choices, not a signal about the future. And in a properly random draw, past frequency does not predict future draws either — every draw is independent. Either way, the maths does not support a prediction. That is true of the sites promising fafi predictions today, and it was true in 1956.
The Legal Position, Stated Plainly
Street fafi has never been legal in South Africa, and it is not legal now.
The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition's own public guide on gambling lists "fafi (ichina)" among the popular forms of illegal gambling in the country, alongside dice, unlicensed poker and online casinos. Section 7 of the National Gambling Act 7 of 2004 makes unauthorised gambling unlawful, and the penalties under the Act run to a fine of up to R10 million or up to ten years' imprisonment. Provincial gambling boards and the police have run enforcement operations against fafi operators for decades.
This is not a modern crackdown on a traditional pastime, either. Gambling was heavily restricted in South Africa for centuries before the current statute — the Gambling Act 55 of 1965 continued a prohibition that historians trace back to the 1600s. Legal casino gambling only re-emerged through the Bantustans of Ciskei, Bophuthatswana, Transkei and Venda in the late 1970s, and a national legal framework followed only after the Wiehahn Commission reported in 1995. Fafi simply carried on regardless, throughout all of it. As one anthropological account puts it, its persistence functioned as a form of agency and hope in communities that were economically marginalised by design.
What the Legal Version Looks Like Today
The tradition survives in a lawful form, and the distinction matters.
Licensed South African bookmakers offer Lucky Numbers — fixed-odds bets on the results of real, published lottery draws from around the world. The draw is conducted by an independent lottery authority, the result is public, the price is set and displayed before you bet, and the operator answers to a provincial licensing board. What you keep from the older tradition is the culture around it: the symbols, the dream-reading, the habit of choosing a number for a reason.
If you want the mechanics, our how to play Lucky Numbers guide covers them, and Lucky Numbers payouts compared shows how the pricing works across draws. You can check any operator's licence against the register in our licence register.
Fafi is a genuinely remarkable piece of South African social history — a Cantonese flower game that crossed an ocean with mine workers, absorbed Zulu dream interpretation, and outlasted a century of prohibition. It deserves better than being reprinted as a list of 36 pictures with a payout promise attached.
FAQ
What is fafi?
A numbers game of Chinese origin played mainly in South African townships, in which players bet on a single number from 1 to 36, each tied to a symbol. It is also known as fah-fee, fa-fi, mo-china, mochaina and umchina — the isiZulu word for "Chinese."
Where does the word fafi come from?
From the Cantonese faa wui (花會), rendered in Mandarin as hua hui and also called Chi-Fah, a gambling game widely played in China during the 19th and 20th centuries. The name travelled with the game.
When did fafi come to South Africa?
In the early 1900s, with Chinese migrants. Academic accounts record it as first played by gold miners in the old Transvaal before spreading into the townships of the Reef. The earliest substantial study of it is Laura Longmore's 1956 paper in the South African Journal of Science.
Why does fafi use 36 numbers and symbols?
The 1-to-36 structure came with the Chinese original — the same structure appears in the related Trinidadian game Whe Whe. The symbols and their meanings developed locally, drawing heavily on Zulu dream interpretation, which is why the set reflects South African urban life so directly.
Is fafi legal in South Africa?
No. The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition lists fafi (ichina) among the country's illegal forms of gambling, and section 7 of the National Gambling Act 7 of 2004 makes unauthorised gambling unlawful. The lawful equivalent is fixed-odds Lucky Numbers betting with a licensed bookmaker on published lottery draws.
Can fafi results be predicted?
No. Researchers who asked players how the street game's winning number is chosen were told by participants that the banker selects it himself, with knowledge of the bets placed — so past results record one person's choices rather than a pattern. And in a genuinely random draw, each result is independent of the last, so past frequency does not predict future draws either.
This page is general-interest social history and is published for entertainment and information only. Nothing here is a prediction, a system or advice on how to win. 18+ only. Gambling involves financial risk; treat it as entertainment and never stake more than you can afford to lose. If gambling is no longer fun, contact the National Responsible Gambling helpline on 0800 006 008 or SMS HELP to 076 675 0710.
