Open By-laws is a community project to make our by-laws easier to find, read and share.
Municipal by-laws form part of the legal foundation for effective service delivery and cooperative communities. In many municipalities, however, the by-laws are out of date or difficult to find. Open By-laws helps to solve this problem by working with a contributor community to put up-to-date by-laws online, freely available to everyone.
What are by-laws?
By-laws are laws managed by municipalities. The Constitution of South Africa gives municipalities the power to pass their own legislation, in the form of by-laws, for particular subject areas. These by-laws the same power and force as other national and provincial legislation.
Municipalities are required by the Municipal Systems Act to make their by-laws publicly available on their website. However, most municipalities lack the capacity to do so. Open By-laws helps to fill this gap.
Powered by Laws.Africa
Open By-laws is a project of Laws.Africa, a non-profit organisation that curates the African legislation commons and builds technology to enable free access to the law.
Laws.Africa trains and supports a contributor community that is working together to build an African legislation commons and make African law freely available to everyone.
How you can help
The by-laws on this website are maintained by a community of contributors. The contributors work hard to put by-laws online and keep them up-to-date. Laws.Africa provides training and support and builds the technology that makes this project possible.
Read more about being a contributor.
Contributors
An enormous thanks to our contributors and editors:
Ally Adendorf, Andrew Collier, Christopher Gevers, Cliff Featherstone, Greg Kempe, Juan Barrios, Matt Adendorf, Nqobile Sibisi, Pivendren Naik, Richard Gevers, Tricia Govindasamy.
In 2013, Open By-laws received a Shuttleworth Flash Grant and an AMI Sandbox Fund grant, and we're grateful to these funders who helped us in our infancy.
Read more about being a contributor.
Disclaimer
We aren't lawyers. We don't write these laws, we're just making them available and there may be mistakes. Always get a professional legal opinion.
Credits
- Photo of Cape Town by mattharvey1 on flickr
- Photo of eThekwini by south-african-tourism on flickr
- Photo of Johannesburg skyline by nico_roets on flickr
- Photo of Cape Agulhas lighthouse by Allan Watt on flickr
- Photo of Mbizana from Mbizana Municipality website
- Photo of Velddrif in Bergrivier by jbdodane on flickr
- Photo of Cederberg by SA-Venues.com on flickr
- Photo of Calitzdorp in Kannaland by Robert Wallace on flickr