New legislative measures in South Africa aimed at combating over‐indebtedness—are the new proposals sufficient under the constitution and law in general?

The National Credit Bill codifies a number of fundamental rights of consumers in the credit market. It provides inter alia for a right to information to enable consumers to make informed choices and thereby contributes to one of the purposes of the proposed legislation, namely to provide mechanisms to combat over‐indebtedness. The main purpose of this research is to evaluate the proposed measures in the Bill aimed at combating over‐indebtedness and also to determine to which extent these measures comply with the general constitutional consumer protection demands. In order to achieve this, the relevant guidelines of the INSOL Consumer Debt Report and measures in other jurisdictions will also be considered. Since the South African Constitution does not directly obligate the state to enact specific credit laws and as the Bill seeks, in the spirit of the supreme law, to codify certain basic consumer rights, the new legislative initiatives are to be welcomed. It is, however, submitted that the Bill does not go far enough in achieving its particular aims and objectives and that more could be done to bring South African legislation in line with measures in other jurisdictions. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.