Crowd funding for equity

[shooter69]

Hi all,

I was wondering this morning about investing in new ideas and business. The kind you find on Kickstarter.
Then I was wondering how I could benefit from it in the form of investment and stumbeled on to this article:
http://betabeat.com/2012/06/amateur...-mean-everyone-can-play-venture-capitalist/1/

Now to all you legal and business buffs, here is my question -

1. Seeing that all of these crowd funding websites will probably be US based, how would I as a south African invest in something like this?
2. Would this be legal?
3. Is there already something like this in SA?

Looking forward to all your replies