Diane Terblanche. Photograph: Lisa Skinner
Lynley Donnelly meets up with the South African consumer’s agony aunt
I’m standing near the Old Fort on Constitution Hill, just outside the coffee shop, waiting to interview Diane Terblanche, chair of the National Consumer Tribunal (NCT).
After about five anxious minutes, I realise the woman hidden in plain sight, sitting at a table across the quad, is the person I need to speak to.
It is a little like discovering South Africa even has a consumer tribunal.
Terblanche heads the NCT that came into being with the National Credit Act and has been hearing cases since late 2007. But it was officially launched only two weeks ago.
South Africans finally have a body designed to offer redress to consumers, particularly when it comes to irresponsible lending practises and credit provision.
I ask Terblanche why the NCT’s work has flown under the radar?
”We don’t get nearly enough cases,” she says. ”This is because we have not gone out and aggressively communicated our role.”
The formal launch was in part aimed at addressing the problem.
Articulate and approachable, Terblanche is clearly passionate about consumer rights.
As an attorney by trade she has long been a campaigner for the regular shopper, serving as chair of Cicodev Africa (an African consumer and citizens lobbying group), chair of the National Consumer Forum between 1993 and 1997, director of the Micro Finance Regulatory Council between 1997 and 2007 and now chair of the NCT.
The tribunal hears applications and allegations of prohibited practice made in terms of the National Credit Act (NCA). It has ruled on 15 cases, with another 60 before it. Among its success stories is a case between the NCT and Rudco Finance, which saw the company give the confirmation of an undertaking to refund consumers.
A second case involved 17 consumer complaints against the credit provider Chatspare Financial Services. The complainants alleged that Chatspare had charged between 108% and 240% interest a year. The tribunal ordered Chatspare to reimburse consumers more than R600 000.
But it is with the much-anticipated Consumer Protection Bill — awaiting enactment — that the NCT should come into its own. Although it can rule on contraventions of the NCA, once the Bill becomes law the tribunal’s mandate will expand significantly.
The Bill for the first time clearly outlines South African consumers’ rights, their recourse to justice and increases the liability for businesses and individuals who treat consumers unscrupulously.
Consumer rights include the right to disclosure and information. This means less confusing fine print in baffling legal jargon. It also provides for fair marketing practices, prohibiting practices such as referral or bait marketing.
Terblanche points out another major significance of the Act is the definition of a consumer.
”Before it simply meant the person who buys the goods,” she says. ”Now it includes the users of goods and the beneficiaries of those goods.”
Even interest groups and representative organisations can sue on behalf on consumers, once the Bill is passed. Legal experts and business are concerned that the Bill will result in great cost to businesses in terms of compliance. In addition the extent to which businesses and individuals become liable for faulty goods has wide-ranging ramifications and much of the detail of the legislation will come in the form of government regulation, which still needs to be determined.
But Terblanche says this is reactionary: ”The legislation has been created because consumers’ tolerance levels have been tested too much. It’s the fed-up factor, people are just fed up with being taken advantage of.”
Although compliance may come at a cost, she says the cost of non-compliance is even more pressing. ”When a person’s washing machine breaks, what does it cost a business in resources, lost employee time and productivity while they try and get it fixed or lodge a complaint?” she asks.
”If this is not regulated, how much more will it cost all of us?”
