South African Legal Research

This is an introductory guide for U.S. law students and practitioners researching the law of South Africa.

Statutes & Codes

  • Foreign Law Guide Database
    This database is useful when you are searching for a particular law, such as marriage act, investment law, etc. Simply select "South Africa" as your jurisdiction, then browse the subject headings.
  • Juta's Statutes of South Africa Intl KTL12.S6
    The South African statutes laws by a major South African legal publisher.
  • Laws of South Africa
    This new website is a work in progress by the University of Pretoria so not all South African legislation is included just yet. It provides updated and consolidated legislation, regulations to acts, and historical legislation.
  • Parliament of South Africa
    Official parliament web site with links to acts, bills, hansard, and other documents.
  • Southern African Legal Information Institute
    This free website has useful databases with current legislation, numbered acts, regulations, and previous versions of legislation and regulations. Coverage years vary. The South African government offers a chronological listing of acts since 1991 (not searchable) with links to pdfs from the official gazette. Repealed acts are listed in a separate section
  • Lexis - Butterworths Statutes of South Africa
    Note: Many international and foreign materials have not migrated to the new Lexis Advance platform. You may need to access Lexis.com from Lexis Advance to get these materials. On the older Lexis platform, these statutes can be found at Legal > Find Laws by Country or Region > Commonwealth > Legislation & Regulations > Butterworths Statutes of South Africa. This is a complete and editorially enhanced compilation of South African Statutes (Acts), including legislation since the abolishment of apartheid. From 1910 to present.