South Africans share a modern frustration. Picture this: in the middle of something important, your phone rings. It is not someone you know. It is a voice, sometimes recorded, advertising a product you never asked for. You hang up. Tomorrow it happens again. This intrusion has been normalised to the point where many of us no longer expect it to change. However, on April 15 trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau gazetted an amendment to regulation 4 of section 11(3) of the Consumer Protection Act. This means the National Consumer Commission (NCC) has been empowered to take meaningful steps to reinforce citizens’ right to not be contacted. What has changed The amendment establishes a formal opt-out registry system, administered by the NCC. It creates a national list consumers can register on to block unwanted direct marketing, either from a specific company or from the entire direct marketing industry at once. This is not optional; it is a legal requirement. Once a consumer is on that registry, direct marketers are obliged to check it and update their databases accordingly every single month. Registration for consumers and direct marketers opens in July. The NCC will communicate the process before then. Why it matters Consumer rights have long existed on paper more convincingly than in practice. The Consumer Protection Act has always given individuals the right to restrict unwanted direct marketing. The Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia) requires companies to obtain consent before contacting consumers for direct marketing. And yet the calls kept coming. The opt-out registry offers a safety net from unwanted spam calls. Consumers will have a single, centralised place to assert their preferences, and businesses will have to honour them. Now the burden shifts. Consumers will not have to block the same number repeatedly or explain yourself to a call centre agent. The law makes this clearer than ever before. For vulnerable consumers, such as the elderly, those targeted by predatory financial product marketing and people bombarded by debt collection-adjacent solicitations, this protection is crucial. What it means for business The regulation will require operational changes for any business engaged in direct marketing, and the timeline is tight. Direct marketers are obligated to do the following under the amended regulation: Register on the NCC opt-out registry; Cleanse their marketing databases against the NCC database monthly; Pay the registration, renewal and cleansing fees; and Maintain ongoing compliance with updated consumer preferences on the opt-out registry, meaning if a consumer opts out today, that must be reflected in your systems before your next campaign goes out. This regulation must not be read in isolation, but alongside section 11 of the Consumer Protection Act and section 69(1)(3) of Popia, which together require consent for direct marketing and clear opt-out mechanisms in every communication. Companies that treat Popia compliance as a box-ticking exercise will discover the consequences of that approach are dire. Noncompliance carries an administrative penalty of up to R1m or 10% of annual turnover (whichever is greater). For large operations that second figure is substantial. For smaller businesses that assumed the rules did not apply to them, the first figure alone motivates compliance. Broader signal In South Africa consumer trust is fragile and institutional credibility is hard won. Every spam call that goes unanswered, every unwanted SMS, every marketing email sent without genuine consent chips away at the relationship between businesses and the people they serve. The NCC’s acting commissioner, Hardin Ratshisusu, has said “consumers have for too long been exposed to intrusive and unwanted direct marketing”. The businesses that understand this statement, not merely as a compliance problem but as a trust problem, will emerge from this regulatory shift with a stronger customer relationship. Ethical direct marketing is always possible. This regulation simply makes unethical direct marketing harder to get away with. What should happen Consumers must watch for the NCC’s communication in the coming weeks and register when the system opens in July. They have the right to be left alone, and now there is a formal mechanism to claim it. For businesses, the window for preparation is narrower than it might appear. Registering with the NCC, auditing your marketing databases, integrating your customer relationship management systems with the opt-out registry, training your teams and building the governance structures to maintain monthly compliance does not happen overnight. The business that adapts now will be compliant when the regulation is in force. The ones that wait for July will be scrambling. The laws to protect consumers from marketing were always there. What we lacked was the infrastructure to enforce them at scale. This opt-out registry is that infrastructure. It is long overdue, and those affected by it must take it seriously. • Nzimande is an admitted attorney and digital rights specialist.