SA tightens rules on spam calls with new opt‑out registry and R1m fines

South Africans plagued by unwanted marketing calls and messages now have a formal legal mechanism to fight back, after the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition gazetted sweeping amendments to the Consumer Protection Act regulations earlier this year.

Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Parks Tau published the Consumer Protection Act Amendment Regulations, 2026 in the Government Gazette on 15 April, amending Regulation 4 of Section 11(3) of the Act.

The changes took immediate legal effect and establish a formal opt-out registry, run by the National Consumer Commission (NCC), giving consumers the power to block unwanted direct marketing – whether from a single company or from the direct marketing industry as a whole.

What has emerged since is that, at the centre of the new framework is a recurring set of obligations for marketers.

All entities engaged in direct marketing were required to register on the NCC's Opt-Out Registry from July 2026, and must renew that registration annually. The 2026 renewal fee is R1,931, rising on a three-year adjustment cycle to R2,235 by 2029.

Marketers must also cleanse their databases against the opt-out list on a monthly basis, at a cost starting at 12 cents per data entry and increasing to 18 cents by 2029. Once a consumer has placed a pre-emptive block, marketing to that person is prohibited outright, and the registry itself is required to remain accessible to the public at all times, barring unforeseen technical interruptions.

The penalties for non-compliance are steep: businesses that ignore the rules face administrative fines of up to R1 million, or 10 per cent of the direct marketer's annual turnover, whichever amount is greater.

The regulations arrive against a backdrop of a sharp rise in unwanted contact. Truecaller has reported that monthly spam call volumes rose by nearly 23% on average in the first five months of 2026 compared with the previous year, while spam messages climbed even faster, up 61.2% over the same period.

Separately, South Africans are reported to have received 5.38 billion spam calls in just the first two months of the year, with many households experiencing between five and ten unwanted calls daily. The regulatory process itself dates back to 2024, driven by the recognised surge in unsolicited marketing.

The changes build on earlier amendments to the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) regulations, published by the Information Regulator and in effect since 17 April 2025, which introduced requirements for telemarketers to record consumers' consent the first time they are contacted – a rule that also extends to the automated dialling machines widely used by direct marketing firms.

Legal experts have broadly welcomed the changes while flagging concerns about how effectively they can be enforced. Attorneys at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, Kgatlhiso Mofokeng and Tim Fletcher, noted that international experience with do-not-call registries shows they tend to significantly reduce legitimate, locally based telemarketing, but have far less effect on calls originating outside the country's borders, since foreign parties are not bound by South African regulations.

They compared the situation to installing traffic lights without any policing to enforce them, warning that a registry lacking robust enforcement will ultimately only bind marketers who were already inclined to comply. It is also unclear, according to the same commentary, whether network-level technical measures exist to identify marketers who continue to flout the rules.

Despite those reservations, the NCC has welcomed the amendments as a significant step forward for consumer protection, and law firm Wright Rose-Innes described the changes as marking a fundamental shift in the country's direct marketing landscape.

SOURCES: IOL, BusinessTech, MyBroadband, Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, and 2oceansvibe.