The POPI Act / Sections / Section 59
Section 59
Failure to notify processing subject to prior authorisation
Chapter 6 · Prior Authorisation
If section 58(1) or (2) is contravened, the responsible party is guilty of an offence and liable to a penalty as set out in section 107.
Source: justice.gov.za — Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (official PDF) — cross-checked verbatim before publishing.
Beyond the text
What this means for your estate
- Contravening either the notification duty in s.58(1) or the processing-suspension duty in s.58(2) is a criminal offence, not just an administrative slip — s.107 sets the penalty.
- In practice this section only matters to estates that fall within the narrow s.57(1) categories in the first place; for everyone else it's a fallback deterrent rather than a live risk.
Relevant tool
PopiGuard flags the small set of activities where s.57-58's notification duty applies, so this offence provision never becomes a live risk by oversight.