Connectivity — South Africa
What travelers need to know about connectivity in South Africa. What is legal at home can be a serious crime here — each rule links to its official source.
Connectivity in South Africa: allowed only under specific conditions.
Buying a South African SIM card means registering it under RICA before it will work. A visitor must give full name, passport number, the country that issued the passport, and an address — and the shop has to verify that address from a document such as a bank statement or a utility bill under three months old. Roaming on your own foreign SIM is exempt.
The obligation falls on the operator, not the traveller: an unregistered SIM cannot be activated at all, and a provider that breaches s.40 "is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding R100 000 for each day on which such failure to comply continues" (s.51(3A)) — which is why stores enforce the paperwork strictly.
§ Republic of South Africa — Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Amendment Act 48 of 2008 (RICA), Government Gazette No. 31784, 9 January 2009, substituting s.40 of Act 70 of 2002