South Africa Constitutional Court held its Surveillance Law Unconstitutional.

Recently, in the case of Amabhugane Centre for Investigative journalism NOC and Anr v. Minister of Justice and correctional services and Ors., the court held that the surveillance of private communications limits the right to privacy, the Constitutional Court of South Africa. With this observation, the court held the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provisions of Communication-Related Information Act, 2002 unconstitutional.

The reasoning given by the court is that the legislation fails to provide for the safeguards to endure that a judge designated in terms of Section 1 is sufficiently independent; does not provide for notifying the subject of surveillance of the fact of his or her surveillance as soon as notification can be given without jeopardizing the purpose of surveillance after it has been terminated; it does not provide safeguards to address the fact that interception directions are sought and obtained ex-parte; it does not prescribe procedures to ensure that the data collected would not be used unlawfully, including prescribing procedures to be followed for examining, copying, sharing, sorting through, using, storing or destroying the data; and provide adequate safeguards where the subject of surveillance is a practicing lawyer or journalist.

Giving the reasonings, the legislation was held unconstitutional on 4^th of February 2021.