South African Law

The legislative capital of South Africa is Cape Town. The National Parliament is bicameral, consisting of the National Assembly (the lower House) and National Council of Provinces (the upper House). The National Assembly is the House directly elected by the voters, while the National Council of Provinces is elected by the provinces and represents them to ensure that provincial interests are taken into account in the national sphere of government.

For detailed information on the South African Parliament, see the Our Parliament pages on the Parliament website.

Parliament is the highest national legislative authority. Provincial Legislatures are responsible for passing provincial Acts. These are termed subordinate legislation. 

Schedule 4 of the Constitution lists the functional areas in which both Parliament and the provincial legislatures concurrently have the right to make laws. For example agriculture, health, housing, the environment and education (but not tertiary education). Schedule 5 of the Constitution lists the functional areas in which only the provincial legislatures may make laws - for example provincial roads and traffic.

To become a law, national bills must be considered by and pass both Houses of Parliament: the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces. Once passed by both Houses, bills must receive the assent of the President to become law. Following assent they are published in the Government Gazette as Acts of Parliament.

For a concise and helpful overview of the South African national legislative process see How a Law is Made on the Parliament website.

Finding bills

• The official website of the South African Government provides the official versions of the full text of draft bills (from July 1997 to current) and bills as introduced (from 1996 to current). Bills and draft bills can be browsed by date or searched by keyword. 
• Polity: a non-government site that includes the full text of bills since 1995. The links to the bills are often to the official Government Gazette versions. The site has better searching and browsing capabilities than the government sites. It can be browsed by year and/or topic, and has fairly sophisticated search capabilities. Note that to browse years prior to 2016, you need to select a topic first.
• The official website of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa provides the full text of bills since 1998, as well as bill status lists. 

Finding Parliamentary debates (Hansard) 

The official website of the Parliament of South Africa includes the Hansards of both Houses from June 1999 to current. 

Finding green and white papers and other Parliamentary documents

• The official website of the South African Government includes the full text of white papers (from November 1994 to current) and green papers (from April 1995 to current), as well as other documents such as Annual Reports, Statistical Documents, Documents for Public Comment and Parliamentary Documents.
• The official website of the Parliament of South Africa includes selected full text Parliamentary Papers from 2001 to current.

Finding Government Gazettes 

All bills and Acts as passed are published in the official Government Gazette. This is not available online on open access and we do not subscribe to it. However, many of the links to Acts and bills from the open access sites listed above are to the official Gazette versions. 

Acts as passed

Full-text Acts as passed from 1993 to current are available on the following open access databases:

• The official South African Government  website. Acts may be browsed by year or searched by keyword. 
• Polity: the links to Acts on this non-government site are often to the official Government Gazette versions. The site has far better searching and browsing capabilities than the offical government sites. It can be browsed by year and/or topic, and has fairly sophisticated search capabilities. Note that to browse years prior to 2016, you need to select a topic first. 

Acts and Regulations in force (compilations including amendments)

The Law Library does not have access to subscription legislation databases such as those on JUTA and Sabinet that enable, for example, sophisticated searching and links to commentary and cases on the provisions. We also do not have access to point-in-time or repealed legislation. 

To find journal articles on specific pieces of South African legislation, or specific legislative provisions, use the indexes/abstracts and full-text databases listed on the Journals page of this Guide.

For example, to find journal articles that have considered a particular Act, use the Legislation search box in the Journal Article Index of the Johannesburg Bar Library (open access). You can add the Act section number also for more targeted searching. Note that this is an index of articles from South African journals only; it does not provide access to the full text.

See the Finding judicial consideration of legislation page of this Guide.