POPIA & Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Chauke & Mazibuko Attorneys Inc. ("the Firm", "we", "us", or "our") respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal information. This Privacy Policy outlines our practices regarding the collection, use, processing, and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA") and the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 ("PAIA").

By using our website, engaging our legal services, or providing us with your personal information, you consent to the processing of your personal information as described in this policy. We take our responsibilities under POPIA seriously and have implemented reasonable organizational and technical measures to safeguard your data.

2. What is Personal Information?

"Personal Information" refers to information relating to an identifiable, living, natural person, and where it is applicable, an identifiable, existing juristic person. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Identity Data: First name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth, and gender.
• Contact Data: Billing address, delivery address, email address, and telephone numbers.
• Financial Data: Bank account details and payment card details.
• Transaction Data: Details about payments to and from you and other details of legal services you have purchased from us.
• Technical Data: Internet Protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
• Usage Data: Information about how you use our website and services.
• Marketing and Communications Data: Your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.

3. How We Collect Your Personal Information

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Direct Interactions: You may give us your Identity, Contact, and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, or otherwise. This includes personal information you provide when you:
  • Instruct us to provide legal services;
  • Subscribe to our publications or newsletters;
  • Request marketing to be sent to you;
  • Enter a competition, promotion, or survey; or
  • Give us feedback or contact us.
• Automated Technologies or Interactions: As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. We collect this personal information by using cookies, server logs, and other similar technologies.
• Third Parties or Publicly Available Sources: We may receive personal information about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
  • Technical Data from analytics providers such as Google based outside South Africa;
  • Contact, Financial, and Transaction Data from providers of technical, payment, and delivery services;
  • Identity and Contact Data from data brokers or aggregators;
  • Identity and Contact Data from publicly available sources such as CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Property Commission).

4. Purpose of Processing Personal Information

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

• Performance of a Contract: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you (i.e., providing legal services).
• Legitimate Interest: Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Legal Obligation: Where we need to comply with a legal obligation (e.g., FICA requirements).

Specific purposes include:

• To register you as a new client.
• To process and deliver legal services including managing payments, fees, and charges.
• To manage our relationship with you which will include notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy.
• To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition, or complete a survey.
• To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting, and hosting of data).
• To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you.
• To use data analytics to improve our website, services, marketing, customer relationships, and experiences.

5. Disclosure of Personal Information

We may have to share your personal information with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in paragraph 4 above:

• Internal Third Parties: Other attorneys and staff within the Firm.
• External Third Parties:
  • Service providers acting as processors who provide IT and system administration services.
  • Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors, and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance, and accounting services.
  • The South African Revenue Service, regulators, and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
  • Courts, Sheriffs, Advocates, and Correspondents where necessary for litigation or legal processes.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6. International Transfers

Some of our external third parties are based outside South Africa, so their processing of your personal information will involve a transfer of data outside the country. Whenever we transfer your personal information out of South Africa, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal information to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in South Africa which give personal information the same protection it has in South Africa.

7. Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered, or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify you and the Information Regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

8. Data Retention

We will only retain your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal information for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, or other requirements.

By law, we have to keep basic information about our clients (including Contact, Identity, Financial, and Transaction Data) for five years after they cease being customers for tax purposes and FICA compliance.

9. Your Legal Rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal information, including the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal information to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal information in the following scenarios:
  • If you want us to establish the data's accuracy.
  • Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
  • Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
  • You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal information in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal information. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

10. Contact Details

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our privacy practices, please contact our Information Officer:

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Regulator (South Africa), the state supervisory authority for data protection issues (http://www.justice.gov.za/inforeg/). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the Information Regulator, so please contact us in the first instance.

11. Changes to the Privacy Policy and Your Duty to Inform Us of Changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 9 March 2026.

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us.