South Africa Law MCP

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server providing full-text search and structured access to South African legislation and case law, including POPIA, the Cybercrimes Act, ECTA, Companies Act, Consumer Protection Act, and more.

Note: South Africa has one of Africa's most mature legal frameworks for data protection and cybersecurity. The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) is considered one of the continent's most comprehensive data protection laws, closely modeled on the EU GDPR. The Information Regulator is the independent data protection authority responsible for enforcement. The Cybercrimes Act (2020) provides a modern, comprehensive framework for addressing cybercrime, aligned with the Budapest Convention.

Deployment Tier

MEDIUM -- dual tier (free + professional), bundled free database.

South Africa has an extensive legal corpus including significant case law from the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court of Appeal, and High Courts. The free tier covers core national legislation, while the professional tier adds full case law coverage.

Tier	DB Size	Includes	Transport
Free (bundled)	~100-200 MB	All national Acts, regulations, key Constitutional Court decisions	stdio (npm)
Professional (full)	~500 MB - 1 GB	All legislation + full case law from all courts	stdio (npm)

Data Sources

Source	Authority	Method	Update Frequency	License	Coverage
SAFLII	SAFLII / UCT / Wits	HTML Scrape	Weekly	Free Access	National Acts, regulations, case law from all courts
South African Government	Government of South Africa	HTML Scrape	On change	Government Open Data	Government Gazette, Acts, regulations, policy documents
Dept. of Justice	Dept. of Justice and Constitutional Development	HTML Scrape	Monthly	Government Public Domain	Constitution, justice-related legislation, POPIA/PAIA regulations

Full provenance metadata: sources.yml

Key Legislation Covered

Act	Identifier	Domain
Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA)	Act 4 of 2013	Data protection, privacy, Information Regulator
Cybercrimes Act	Act 19 of 2020	Cybercrime offences, cyber response, mutual assistance
Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA)	Act 25 of 2002	E-commerce, electronic signatures, cyber inspectors
Companies Act	Act 71 of 2008	Corporate governance, company formation
Consumer Protection Act	Act 68 of 2008	Consumer rights, product liability, data in marketing
Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA)	Act 2 of 2000	Right of access to information, public and private bodies
Regulation of Interception of Communications Act (RICA)	Act 70 of 2002	Lawful interception, SIM registration, communications surveillance

Quick Start

Install from npm

npm install -g @ansvar/southafrica-law-mcp

Run via npx (no install)

npx @ansvar/southafrica-law-mcp

Configure in Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "southafrica-law": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@ansvar/southafrica-law-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/Ansvar-Systems/southafrica-law-mcp.git
cd southafrica-law-mcp
npm install
npm run build
npm run build:db      # Build the full database
npm run build:db:free # Build the free-tier database
npm start             # Start the server

Tools

Tool	Description
get_provision	Retrieve a specific section/article from a South African Act by law identifier and article number
search_legislation	Full-text search across all South African legislation
search_case_law	Full-text search across Constitutional Court, Supreme Court of Appeal, and High Court decisions
list_acts	List all available Acts in the database
get_act_structure	Get the table of contents / structure of a specific Act
get_provision_eu_basis	Cross-reference a South African provision with related EU/international instruments (GDPR, Budapest Convention, NIS2)

Contract Tests

This MCP includes 12 golden contract tests covering:

• Article retrieval (3 tests): POPIA Section 2, Cybercrimes Act Section 2, Companies Act Section 1
• Search (3 tests): personal information, cybercrime, electronic communication
• Citation roundtrip (2 tests): POPIA citation URL, Cybercrimes Act citation
• Cross-reference (2 tests): GDPR relationship, Budapest Convention relationship
• Negative cases (2 tests): non-existent Act, malformed section number

Run contract tests:

npm run test:contract

Drift Detection

Golden hashes track 7 stable upstream provisions to detect silent content changes:

• Constitution of South Africa (1996), Section 1 (Republic)
• Constitution Section 14 (Right to privacy)
• POPIA Section 1 (definitions)
• POPIA Section 2 (purpose)
• Cybercrimes Act Section 1 (definitions)
• ECTA Section 1 (definitions)
• Companies Act Section 1 (interpretation)

Run drift detection:

npm run drift:detect

Development

npm install          # Install dependencies
npm run build        # Compile TypeScript
npm test             # Run all tests
npm run test:contract  # Run contract tests only
npm run lint         # Lint source code
npm run drift:detect # Check for upstream changes

Security

See SECURITY.md for vulnerability disclosure policy.

Report data errors: Open an issue

License

Apache-2.0 -- see LICENSE.

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Built by Ansvar Systems -- Cybersecurity compliance through AI-powered legal intelligence.