THE PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION IN SOUTH AFRICA
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI) strives to promote the protection of information processed and/or published by private and public bodies. This is essential to protect the rights entrenched in the Bill of Rights, in accordance with international standards.
The Act was signed by the President in 2013 and has been published in the Government Gazette, which means that it is a law of the country. An Information Regulator must now be appointed by nomination. Once the Regulator is established and regulations are published, the Act will officially commence.
From that commencement date, businesses will have only one to three years to ensure organisation wide compliance; businesses that don’t comply will face heavy penalties such as fines and/or imprisonment.
According to the Act, the conditions for the lawful processing of personal information include; accountability, processing limitations, purpose specification, further processing limitation, information quality, openness, security safeguards and data subject participation.
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