Main Developments in Competition Law and Policy 2025 – South Africa

The year 2025 has produced a series of significant developments in South Africa’s competition law landscape. These developments span merger control, cartel enforcement and digital market regulation. What ties these developments together is a growing assertiveness from both the competition authorities in shaping markets with an eye on inclusion, accountability, and broader constitutional values , rather than a narrow focus on price and output alone.

2025 can be read as a year in which the tools of competition law were used not only to curb traditional forms of market power, but also to secure commitments around connectivity, media sustainability, transformation, and sectoral restructuring.

Below, I reflect on the significant developments of 2025 and the broader policy signals they send.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Vodacom Maziv Merger approved

Few merger stories have travelled a prolonged path as Vodacom’s acquisition of a 30% interest in Maziv, the operator behind Vumatel and DFA. Initially, both the Commission and the Competition Tribunal prohibited the deal based on horizontal concerns in fibre and potential foreclosure risks. At that point, one might have assumed the matter was settled.

The Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition took the rare step of appealing the Tribunal’s decision, an intervention that signalled the high public-interest stakes attached to infrastructure and connectivity. When the Competition Appeal Court (CAC) finally ruled in 2025, it approved the merger subject to an extensive set of commitments, effectively rewriting the deal into a national developmental project.

The commitments are not cosmetic. They include large-scale fibre roll-out in townships, informal settlements, and rural areas; subsidised or free fibre for low-income households; and a staggering R60 billion investment to extend 5G to 90% of the population within five years. Schools, clinics, libraries and police stations will be connected at zero cost. There are also employment and supplier-development commitments designed to stimulate broader economic participation.

While the commitments are substantial, the CAC’s jurisprudential contribution is equally notable. The Court emphasised that competition analysis cannot exist outside the “normative framework of the Constitution.” In practice, this means that affordable connectivity and the welfare of low-income consumers are not simply public-interest add-ons; they are central to evaluating the competitive effects themselves. This convergence of public interest and competition principles is increasingly characterising South Africa’s approach to complex markets.

The decision consolidates an emerging South African approach: competition analysis, especially in concentrated infrastructure markets, cannot be divorced from the country’s broader constitutional commitments. This development is likely to influence future merger assessments, both in terms of substantive evaluation and the scale of commitments expected from large firms.

Public-Interest Regulation in the French Media Company ‘Canal+’ and South Africa’s ‘MultiChoice’ Transaction

The Competition Tribunal’s conditional approval of the Canal+ acquisition of MultiChoice continues, and arguably deepens, the trend toward expansive public-interest regulation in large, foreign-acquiring mergers. Following the Competition Commission’s recommendation in May 2025 that the transaction be approved with conditions, the Tribunal endorsed a package of commitments aimed at enhancing employment protection, promoting transformation, promoting local content, and fostering sectoral development in the South African audiovisual ecosystem.

Among other things, the merged entity is required to increase the shareholding of historically disadvantaged persons (HDPs) and workers in both Orbicom (the signal distributor) and the newly carved-out South African licensee, MultiChoice (Pty) Ltd (“LicenceCo”). This ensures that, even within a foreign-acquiring structure, there is continued domestic and HDP-controlled ownership at the level of the licensed broadcaster.

In addition, the conditions include a substantial public-interest investment package: Canal+ and MultiChoice have committed to continued and enhanced funding of local general entertainment and sports content, with a particular focus on South African stories and talent, as well as expanded participation opportunities for SMMEs and black-owned production companies across the audiovisual value chain. The remedy package thus explicitly links merger approval to commitments around cultural production, language diversity, and economic inclusion in the creative industries.

Taken together, the Canal+–MultiChoice decision illustrates how merger control is being used not only to prevent structural harm to competition, but also to secure long-term commitments on employment, transformation and cultural production in a strategically important sector. It suggests that foreign investors seeking to acquire control in key South African industries should anticipate robust public-interest negotiations alongside traditional competition analysis.

Anti-Competitive Conduct

The Forex Cartel Case

The long-running foreign exchange (forex) cartel case entered a decisive phase in 2025 as the Competition Commission pursued its appeal before the Constitutional Court. The matter concerns allegations that a group of domestic and foreign banks coordinated to manipulate the USD/ZAR exchange rate between 2007 and 2013 through online chatrooms.

The Competition Appeal Court previously held that the Competition Tribunal lacked jurisdiction over foreign banks with no presence in South Africa. The Commission appealed, arguing that the Competition Act applies to conduct that has an appreciable effect within South Africa, irrespective of the geographic location of the conspirators. In other words, what matters is the locus of harm, not merely the corporate address of the firm.

The Constitutional Court heard arguments over four days and reserved judgment. The outcome has significant implications. A finding in favour of the Commission would affirm the Act’s extraterritorial reach and strengthen the state’s capacity to pursue cross-border collusion in globally integrated markets such as banking services. It would send a clear signal that firms cannot avoid South African jurisdiction simply by locating traders offshore while their conduct affects domestic exchange rates.

A contrary finding would substantially limit the Commission’s jurisdiction and reinforce formal territorial boundaries that are increasingly misaligned with the realities of modern cartel conduct. Such a result could embolden multinational firms to structure anti-competitive arrangements in ways that deliberately exploit jurisdictional gaps.

The case, therefore, presents a fundamental question: how should competition authorities respond to globalised anti-competitive coordination that produces local harm? Whatever the Constitutional Court ultimately decides, its judgment will shape the boundaries of cartel enforcement for years to come and will likely influence how the Commission frames future cases involving complex, cross-border conduct.

Market Inquiries

Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry (MDPMI)

The Competition Commission’s Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry (MDPMI) represents one of the most ambitious digital-sector interventions in South Africa to date. Released in February 2025, it represents the most far-reaching assessment of digital platform conduct in South Africa since the 2019 Data Services Market Inquiry. The Competition Commission grounds the MDPMI in the constitutional protection of media freedom, recognising that the sustainability of news media is central to democratic participation and cannot be decoupled from competitive market conditions.

The MDPMI report documents a sustained decline in advertising revenues, newsroom shrinkage, and print title closures as being closely linked to the structural dominance of global digital platforms and their control over user attention, data, and advertising markets. Traditional news publishers have become increasingly dependent on platforms for traffic and revenue, yet they capture only a small portion of the value generated by their content.

Google, in particular, is found to hold an entrenched dominant position in the general search market. The Commission highlights reduced referral traffic through zero-click searches, algorithmic prioritisation of foreign content, and the extraction of an estimated R300-R500 million in unremunerated value from South African news content annually. Proposed remedies include mandatory compensation, enhanced data access for publishers, adjustments to search results, and a possible 5-10% digital advertising levy.

Social media platforms (Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and X) have similarly constrained publisher reach. Meta’s long-standing deprioritisation of news content and YouTube’s limited revenue-sharing models undermine the sustainability of local publishers while amplifying misinformation and sensationalist content. In this sense, the Inquiry does not only identify harms to competition; it links platform design choices to the quality of public discourse and the resilience of democratic institutions.

Generative AI systems, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Meta AI, are identified as emerging gatekeepers. They rely on publisher content for training, yet generate summaries that provide minimal referral traffic. The Commission recommends the establishment of collective bargaining rights, attribution mechanisms, and opt-out provisions to protect publisher interests in future information flows.

The Inquiry also identifies Google’s vertically integrated power across the AdTech stack as a source of harm to competition. Practices in ad-serving and ad-exchange markets are said to depress publisher revenue and limit the ability of rival AdTech providers to compete.  Proposed interventions include restructuring discriminatory fee practices and adopting remedies aligned with international enforcement outcomes.

Significantly, the Commission secured a R688 million commitment from Google to support the sustainability of the local news sector over five years. This support benefits national, community, and vernacular media through content licensing, innovation grants, and capacity-building efforts. Beyond these voluntary remedies, the inquiry recommended policy reform, including permitting collective bargaining by news publishers when engaging with global platforms. This development mirrors international trends in Australia and Canada.