Nkosana Lekotjolo and Pertunia Ratsatsi

Nkosana Lekotjolo and Pertunia Ratsatsi

Luck has run out for an addicted gambler and errant mother who dumped her baby twice for weeks on end so she could splurge on games of chance.

Now Nomvuyo Williams, 35, will be booted out of every gambling den in South Africa - if she can be found and agrees to sign the banning order.

The Gauteng Gambling Board said it was ready to enforce the ban after Williams again abandoned her baby on April 24, when she left the child with her friend, Zoleka Nyengane.

She hasn't been seen since.

"We want to help her recover because we have the best interests of the baby at heart," the gambling board's legal manager, Lucky Lukhwareni, said.

"We would offer Williams free counselling with a psychiatrist to help her deal with the addiction."

Williams first hit the headlines when she abandoned the toddler when he was just seven months old.

She left him with her helper, Vuyokazi Ngqoleka, in her Kempton Park flat, then went gambling at Gold Reef City for weeks.

Williams, a teacher, moved in with Nyengane when she was kicked out of her flat.

But no sooner had she moved in than she abandoned her baby again and disappeared.

Williams' mother, who is looking after her daughter's two teenaged children, was shocked when Sowetan broke the news yesterday of her daughter's disappearance.

"We thought Nomvuyo had mended her ways," Eleanor Williams, 74, said in King William's Town, Eastern Cape.

"We didn't come and take the child after her first disappearance because she promised to stay with her child.

"We believed her."

Ma Williams said she thought "it would be best if Nomvuyo was banned from all casinos".

"I am not going to look for her. I have had enough. I am just going to fetch the baby."

Ma Williams said she would head for J ohannesburg today.

Nomvuyo's sister, who was too ashamed to be named, said: "I believe that the baby might grow to resent her mother for this."