South African By-laws

Style guide for municipal by-laws in South Africa.

Short titles

Because by-laws in South Africa are often missing a ‘short title’ section, and because they’re inconsistent with regard to casing, the placement of ‘by-law’, the inclusion of the municipality, etc., we’ve decided to standardise the titles for by-laws in the following ways:

1. Exclude By-law relating to the or any part thereof.

   • By-law relating to the Keeping of Dogs → Keeping of Dogs

   • By-law relating to Animals → Animals

2. Exclude B/by-law/s at the end of the title.

   • Animal by-law → Animal

   • Guns, Germs and Steel By-laws → Guns, Germs and Steel

3. Exclude of the XYZ Municipality or similar.

   • Liquor by-law of the Cape Town Metro Municipality → Liquor

   • Cape Town: Liquor by-law → Liquor

   • Air Quality By-law of the Swartland Municipality → Air Quality

4. Include e.g. (Municipal Council of Piketberg) in brackets at the end of the title if this is a more local council / municipality than the (e.g. District) Municipality you’re working in.

5. Use lower case for these words: of, and, in, the, for, on.

6. Capitalise the first letter of all other words.

7. For stubs, use the name of the principal work followed by ': Commencement' / ': Amendment' / ': Repeal' – see https://edit.laws.africa/places/za-cpt/works/?q=&stub=only for examples.

Example of by-law titles

• Electricity Supply

• Fire Safety

• Keeping of Bees

• Municipal Planning

• Property Rates

• Rates

• Street Trading

• Tariff

Cleaning up a by-law

Please remove the names and titles of officers, eg. DR J H LEIBBRANDT, CITY MANAGER