Open By-laws South Africa

Theme: Governance Date Added: 2018-11-21

What is it?

Open By-laws makes the By-laws in municipalities available in an easy-to-access and searchable format by extracting By-law text from PDF documents.

Key Points

  • Large cities have more than 25 By-laws
  • Published By-laws date from 1993 onward
  • Embedded definitions for jargon and technical words
  • Download as ePUB, PDF or HTML

Why is it Important?

By-laws are the laws that govern a municipality, and deal with anything from noise disturbances and neighbourhood activities to how much you are charged for water and how many pets you can own. By-laws are often difficult to find, and are contained within big PDF documents, making them inaccessible to many people. It is unfair to ask people within a municipality to agree to be governed by a certain set of rules if they cannot access and understand those rules in the first place. Open By-laws aims to change this by creating a single place where By-laws are more accessible and readable.


How can it be accessed and used?

There are three different ways to review By-laws on this resource:

  1. If you know what you are looking for, you can use the search function in the top right hand corner of any page of the Open By-laws website.
  2. You can select your municipality from the website home page and browse a list of By-Laws
  3. You can get help with a specific issue by selecting a category from the home page and following the prompts.

Other useful information includes municipal tariffs, as well as service delivery and municipal planning content. Once you have found what you are looking for, you can search within the online text, and can download them in ePUB, PDF or HTML format to read later.

City of Cape Town: Water By-law, 2010

Location: Cape Town
Format: HTML PDF
Year: 2010Last Checked:None
Online: Access URL
Column/
File Names:
  • 25. Restriction or cutting-off of supply: Explanation of when water supply will be cut-off
  • 28. Metering of water supplied: Explanation of meter installation and reading
  • 31. Resale of water: Rules about selling water

City of Johannesburg: Informal Trading By-laws, 2009

Location: Johannesburg
Format: HTML PDF
Year: 2009Last Checked:None
Online: Access URL
Column/
File Names:
  • 3. Forms of Informal Trading: Definition of different types of informal trading
  • 10. Restricted conduct: Regulations about where, when and how an informal trader can operate
  • 13. Offences and penalties: Fines for not complying with the By-Law
  • municipality
  • legislation
  • law

Resource contact name:Open By-laws South Africa

Creation or start date:2018-11-21

Resource contact updated at:2018-12-14

Spatial coverage  South Africa http://www.geonames.org/953987/south-africa.html

Where else has the resource been used?

Year Project Name::
2018 Engaging homelessness: Facilitating change through architectural intervention
2017 How Civic Technology can Drive Accountability in South Africa