Over 300 Acts are now available on PMG.org.za

You can now download the as-enacted PDF versions of more than 300 South African Acts from the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) Bills website. This is in addition to the historical versions and detailed history of each Bill as it makes its way through parliament to become an Act.

From Bills to Acts

PMG has been monitoring the South African parliament for more than 17 years, including posting the details of more than 600 bills that have been presented to Parliament, some of which have been signed into law as Acts.

A bill goes through a number of steps before being signed by the President and becoming an Act, including discussions in Parliament, committee meetings and public hearings. PMG’s website has detailed links to each of these hearings including different draft versions of the bill, audio recordings of meetings and copies of handouts and presentations.

Once a bill is approved by Parliament it is signed by the President (enacted) and becomes an Act. It must then be published in the Government Gazette for it to have the force of law. Over 300 of these Acts are now available on the PMG website.

What we’ve done

When Code for South Africa launched PMG’s new website in early 2015 we weren’t able to include the as-enacted PDF versions of the Acts that PMG had painstakingly collected over the years. After trawling through the old database we’re happy to say that this has been corrected and the as-enacted PDFs are now available for download and are linked to the bills that preceded them.

You can explore PMG’s collection of bills at pmg.org.za/bills/ including the as-enacted PDF for those that have been signed into law.

If you’re the technical sort and know your way around JSON and a REST API, you can also download the raw data on all bills using the PMG API at api.pmg.org.za/bill/.

(Photo by GovernmentZA on flickr.)