LegalB: South African Provincial Legislation

Resources for Africa

OVERVIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN PROVINCIAL LEGISLATION

There are nine provinces in South Africa. They came into being on 27 April 1994, in terms of s124 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act, No. 108 of 1993. They are:

n Eastern Cape Province

n Free State Province

n Gauteng Province (formerly named “Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging Province” and referred to as the PWV)

n KwaZulu-Natal Province

n Limpopo Province (formerly named the “Northern Province”)

n Mpumalanga Province (formerly named the “Eastern Transvaal Province”)

n North West Province

n Northern Cape Province

n Western Cape Province

These nine Provinces are competent to make legislation on various matters, and have the responsibility to implement and administer that law. Several areas of provincial competency are shared by national government, whose legislation may override a particular province’s legislation. For example, “environment” is such an area of shared legislative competency.

In addition, the nine Provinces have been assigned or delegated much of the legislation of old-order provincial, ethnic and racial legislative entities that fell within a particular province’s geographical area of jurisdiction, where these fell within competencies of the current Provinces, and where the capacity of a particular province has allowed.

The National Legislature has also assigned or delegated various new and old-order national legislation to Provinces, and Provinces also from time to time implement and administer particular local government legislation where a local government within their geographical area of jurisdiction lacks the capacity to do so.

LegalB’s Provincial Legislation database consists of a sub-database for each of the nine provinces listed above, and each of these contains a sub-database of original legislation made by the relevant province, and another which contains legislation assigned and delegated to that province.

Please contact us if you wish to obtain information on South African Provincial Legislation which is not yet on this site, or if you wish to contribute to, or comment on, our database of provincial legislation.