GENERAL INTELLIGENCE LAWS AMENDMENT BILL SIGNED INTO LAW

GENERAL INTELLIGENCE LAWS AMENDMENT BILL SIGNED INTO LAW

• 28 March 2025
• New Legislation
• SA Legal Academy

The General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill has been signed into law but is not yet in force. According to a Presidency media statement announcing this, once operationalised the new piece of legislation is expected to facilitate ‘significant reforms ... (across) South Africa’s intelligence services that will be accompanied by improved oversight and accountability’.

To that end, the new statute provides for:

• the implementation of recommendations emerging from:
  • the findings of the 2018 presidential high-level review panel on state security, and
  • certain recommendations emerging from the Zondo Commission state capture inquiry
• measures to address concerns about bulk interception by intelligence services of internet traffic entering or leaving South Africa
• the disestablishment of the State Security Agency as a national government department
• the agency’s replacement with two separate departments:
  • a ‘Foreign Intelligence Service’ [responsible for foreign intelligence gathering and identifying ‘opportunities (for strengthening) and threats to national security’], and
  • a ‘Domestic Intelligence Agency’ (responsible for counterintelligence, gathering domestic intelligence and identifying threats to national security)
• parliamentary oversight of the administration, financial management and expenditure of all intelligence service entities, and
• ‘greater autonomy for the Inspector-General of Intelligence and the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee … in making administrative and functional decisions’.

Please click the links below for more information:

• Act
• Presidency media statement

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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