Who Serves publishes information about people in their capacity as holders of public office, and handles a small amount of information about people who use the site. This policy explains what we process, why we're allowed to, how long we keep it, and how to exercise your rights under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).
Who we are
Who Serves (whoservessa.com) is operated by Kieser Group (Pty) Ltd ("we", "us"), which is the responsible party for the personal information described here.
- General contact: info@whoservessa.com
- Privacy requests and complaints: queries@whoservessa.com, for the attention of the Information Officer of Kieser Group (Pty) Ltd (by law, the head of the company)
Whose information this covers
- People who hold or held public office — Members of Parliament and provincial legislatures, members of the executive, councillors and other office-holders who appear on the record.
- People who write to us or use a form — including the "Is this you?" form on office-holders' pages.
- People who buy the developers a coffee through PayFast.
- Visitors to the website.
Office-holders: what we publish and why
What we publish. Name; the public offices a person holds or held, with dates; party; the province, municipality or constituency they serve; official office contact details (office telephone numbers, official mailboxes, office addresses); interests declared in statutory registers such as Parliament's Register of Members' Interests; qualifications as stated in official or party biographies, submitted by the office, or verified; and accountability records — court proceedings, findings of official bodies (such as the Public Protector, the Auditor-General, commissions of inquiry and parliamentary committees) and matters reported by established news organisations — with the stage each matter has reached.
What we never publish. Identity numbers, home addresses, personal telephone numbers or email addresses, bank details, health information, information about children, or details of family members who do not themselves hold public office. We take information from official and published sources only — never from leaks, private accounts or hacked material.
Our lawful basis. This information concerns the exercise of public power, and publishing it serves the public interest in open, accountable government. We rely on:
- section 11(1)(f) of POPIA — processing necessary for our legitimate interests and those of the public to whom the information is supplied: knowing who holds public office, how to reach their office, what interests they have declared, and how they have been held to account;
- section 12(2)(a) — the information is taken from public records or has deliberately been made public by the person concerned (for example, a member's own declarations, official biography or public statements);
- section 27(1)(e) — for political persuasion (party membership and affiliation), which elected office-holders deliberately make public by standing for office on a party's list or ticket;
- section 7 — POPIA does not apply to processing solely for journalistic purposes by a responsible party who is subject to a code of ethics; our accountability reporting follows the editorial standards we publish, which are modelled on the principles of the Press Code;
- the Constitution — the rights to freedom of expression, including freedom of the press and the freedom to receive and impart information (section 16), and of access to information (section 32), and the values of accountability, transparency and responsiveness in public administration (section 195), which POPIA must be balanced against (section 2).
Where an accountability record concerns an alleged offence, it is drawn only from court records, statements or reports of official bodies, or reporting by established news organisations, and states clearly where the matter stands. An allegation is never presented as a finding.
Sources. Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, the South African Government's official directory (gov.za), provincial legislatures, municipalities, National Treasury, the Electoral Commission of South Africa, courts, official oversight bodies, political parties' own published biographies, and established South African news organisations. Every item links to its source.
People who contact us or use a form
The "Is this you?" form collects your name, your role (for example, "the member" or "parliamentary office"), an email address, the information you submit and an optional link to evidence. To prevent abuse we store a one-way, salted hash of your IP address that cannot be turned back into the address and that changes daily. Your email address is used only to follow up on your submission and is never published. What you submit is checked by an editor and may be published, attributed as "submitted by the office" or similar; your personal contact details are not.
Email. When you email us, we receive your address, name (if given) and whatever you write. We use it only to deal with your message.
Lawful basis: your consent in sending the information (section 11(1)(a)) and our legitimate interest in keeping the record accurate (section 11(1)(f)).
Retention: submissions are deleted 12 months after they have been reviewed; correspondence is kept for as long as needed to deal with it and for up to two years afterwards, in case the same matter comes up again, unless we need it longer to deal with a legal claim.
People who buy the developers a coffee
Payments are processed by PayFast (Pty) Ltd on its own secure pages. We never see or store your card or bank details. PayFast tells us whether a payment succeeded; its notification may include your name and email address, but we do not store them. We keep only the payment reference, amount, fees and status, for five years, because tax law requires us to keep financial records (Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011, section 29). PayFast's own privacy policy governs what PayFast does with your information. See the coffee terms.
Visitors to the website
We don't use advertising, tracking pixels, profiling or third-party analytics that follow you across sites, and the public site sets no cookies of its own (see the cookie notice).
- Hosting and security. The site runs on Cloudflare, which processes your IP address, browser details and the pages you request in order to deliver the site and protect it from attacks. We may use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits without cookies and without identifying you.
- Fonts. Your browser loads our typefaces from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address when it does.
- Searching happens in your browser; we don't record what you search for.
Security
We take appropriate, reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information (section 19): encrypted connections (HTTPS) only; editorial and administrative access restricted to named editors using tokens stored only in hashed form; database access limited to the site's own code; and no collection of information we don't need. If we have reasonable grounds to believe personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, we will notify the Information Regulator and the people affected as section 22 requires.
Your rights
Under POPIA you have the right to:
- ask whether we hold personal information about you, and for a record of it (section 23; requests for records go through our PAIA manual);
- ask us to correct or delete information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading or unlawfully obtained (section 24);
- object to processing on grounds relating to your particular situation (section 11(3)(a));
- not be subjected to a decision with legal consequences based solely on automated processing (section 71) — we use software to find and match public records, but people decide what the record says, and records that don't come from official sources are reviewed by an editor before publication;
- complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa), inforegulator.org.za.
How we handle requests from office-holders. We correct errors quickly and will add context, outcomes and replies (see corrections and right of reply). An objection to publication of accurate information about a person's public office and conduct in it will be weighed against the public interest in that information, as POPIA and the Constitution require; in most cases the public interest prevails, and we will explain our decision in writing.
How to make a request. Email queries@whoservessa.com with "POPIA request" in the subject line, saying what you are asking for. We may need to confirm your identity (or your authority to act for someone) before acting on it. We respond within a reasonable time, and within 30 days in most cases.
Children
Who Serves is a general-audience site about public office. We do not knowingly collect information from children, and we never publish information about children.
Changes to this policy
We will update this policy when what we do changes, and change the date at the top. Significant changes will be noted on the site.