Laws.Africa Editor Guide
English
English
  • Welcome
  • Getting started
    • Lesson plan
    • Signing up
    • Digitising legislation
    • What is Akoma Ntoso
    • Terminology guide
  • Managing Works
    • Creating and editing works
      • Working with commencements
    • Deleting a document
    • Amending works
      • Creating the amending work
      • Linking the amendment
      • Creating a new document at the new point in time
      • Applying the amendments
      • Annotating the amendments
      • Example
      • Exercise
      • Consolidating the annotations
        • Simple example
        • Complicated example
    • Bulk imports (spreadsheet)
  • How-tos
    • Tasks
    • Importing a document
      • The importer
    • Cleaning up an import
    • Going back to a previous version of a document
    • Fixing all-caps headings
    • Working with tables
      • Table errors
    • Working with links
    • Working with italicised terms
    • Inserting an image
    • Inserting special characters
    • Resolving editor warnings
    • Making comments
    • Inserting editorial notes
    • Changing a document's date
    • Changing a document's short title or language
    • Search and rescue
    • How to handle different language documents
    • How to mark up defined terms which do not occur in a Definitions section
    • Very complicated amendments
      • Research
      • Undo some amendments?
      • Update the timeline
      • Create the tasks
      • Apply the amendments
  • Markup guide
    • Introduction
    • Marking up the structure
    • Preface, Long title, and Preamble
    • Headings
    • Marking up Schedules / Annexes
    • Marking up annotations
    • Marking up tables
    • Marking up links
    • Marking up images
    • Marking up footnotes
    • Marking up formatting
    • Marking up insertions and deletions
    • Keyword reference
  • Reviewing a document
    • Reviewing a document
    • Reviewer checklist
    • Signing off a work
  • Style Guides
    • Laws.Africa
    • Côte d'Ivoire
    • Ghana
    • Namibia
      • Regulations
    • Lesotho
    • Malawi
    • Nigeria
    • Zambia
    • South African Acts
    • South African By-laws
    • Tanzania
    • Uganda
    • UNEP
    • Zimbabwe
    • Seychelles
    • Mauritius
    • Pan-African Parliament/ AGP
    • Turks and Caicos
    • Papua New Guinea
    • eSwatini
    • Rwanda
    • Documents in languages other than English
  • Administration
    • Site settings
    • Managing administrators
    • Countries and localities
    • Document subtypes
    • Task labels
    • Taxonomies
    • Notion templates
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Short titles
  • Examples of By-law titles
  1. Style Guides

South African By-laws

Style guide for municipal By-laws in South Africa.

Short titles

South African By-laws don't all have 'Short title' sections, and they aren't named consistently when they do have them. This means alphabetical lists of By-laws aren't easy to scan.

For example, where would you look look for a By-law on air quality in the Swartland municipality? Under B for By-law, S for Swartland, or A for Air Quality?

We standardise the titles for By-laws by:

  1. Excluding By-law relating to the or similar from the start of the title.

    By-law relating to the Keeping of Dogs → Keeping of Dogs By-law, 2012

    By-law relating to Animals → Animals By-law, 2023

  2. Always including or adding By-law(s), <year> at the end of the title — capital B, hyphen, lowercase l — and if they use 'By-laws' with an 's' in the original, keep it.

    Animal bylaw → Animal By-law, 2012

    Guns, Germs and Steel By-Laws → Guns, Germs and Steel By-laws, 2023

  3. Excluding of the XYZ Municipality or similar.

    Liquor by-law of the Cape Town Metro Municipality → Liquor By-law, 2020

    Cape Town: Liquor by-law → Liquor By-law, 2021

    Air Quality By-law of the Swartland Municipality → Air Quality By-law, 2018

  4. Using Title Case: lowercase words like 'of, and, in, the, for, on', and capitalise the rest.

    Air quality by-law, 2016 -> Air Quality By-law, 2016

Examples of By-law titles

  • Electricity Supply By-law, 2012

  • Fire Safety By-law, 2023

  • Keeping of Bees By-law, 2001

  • Municipal Planning By-law, 2014

  • Property Rates By-law, 2020

  • Rates By-law, 2019

  • Street Trading By-law, 2022

  • Tariff By-law, 2018

For stubs, use the name of the main By-law (excluding its year) followed by ': Commencement / Amendment / Repeal'.

Street Trading By-law: Commencement

Keeping of Bees By-law: Amendment

Electricity Supply By-law: Repeal

Oddities and edge cases:

  • If the By-law is for a more local council or municipality than say a district municipality we're monitoring, include the name of the more local council in brackets at the end of the title.

    Keeping of Bees (Municipal Council of Piketberg) By-law, 1998

    Levying of an Availability Charge for Sewerage (Municipal Council of Velddrif) By-law, 1994

PreviousSouth African ActsNextTanzania

Last updated 8 months ago

See for examples.

https://edit.laws.africa/places/za-cpt/works?stub=stub