Fafi Numbers and Meanings

Fafi, also called Mo-china, is a number-based luck game in South African townships — a fixed-odds bet picked from dreams and a chart, with the online product having its own price structure.

What is Fafi or Mo-china?

Fafi – also called Mo-china or fahfee – is a numbers game popular in South African townships. It arrived with Chinese immigrant communities, street Fafi runs outside the licensed gambling system, and its popularity rests on its link to dream-symbol interpretation.

The basic structure of Fafi is simple: Each bet is for a single number between 1 and 36. At the core of Fafi is the idea that a correctly chosen number is the key to winning.

How Fafi/Mo-china numbers are picked

Fafi's defining feature is that players select their numbers by interpreting dreams and matching dream symbols to specific Fafi numbers. This dream guide translates everything found in a dream — animals, people, objects, water, fire, and much more — to the 36 Fafi numbers.

For example, most guides link number 1 to a king and number 2 to a monkey, but the charts disagree on many other numbers. No chart is official, and none of them changes the odds of a number coming up.

The online vs. street versions of Fafi

Where the number-picking game happens makes a big difference. For most of the game's history, Fafi has been a street game. The banker chose the winning number in secret, while runners collected bets and paid out winners.

Online versions draw the number with a random number generator instead of a banker's choice. You pick a number and a stake, and a winning number pays at fixed odds shown before you bet.

This being online, most of the process is automated. The gambler directly picks their number.

But the odds structure is set. Fafi is a fixed-odds bet, with the odds set ahead of the bet placement. You risk money to win a set return if the bet hits. So while dream images might guide gamblers, they do not influence the final payout..

What the Fafi/Mo-china chart means

These charts link dream images to numbers. However, multiple guides offer multiple relationships. And no source documents why a given dream image links to a given number.

This dream-symbol chart presents itself as a way to map a dream to a betting number.

However, those images are only mirrored by other guides, so there is no official or dominant shared understanding. And none of the charts linked the dream images to fixed-odds payouts, because the charts have no effect on the actual chance of winning.

Fafi entirely revolves around the dream chart, but the fixed-odds structure means the dream has no influence on the result.

Playing Responsibly

Gambling isn't for everyone. Street Fafi is not licensed, and online casino-style games are not licensed in South Africa either. If gambling is causing you harm, the National Responsible Gambling Programme offers free, confidential counselling 24/7 on 0800 006 008.