SACC’s Take On Its #DigitalMarkets Oversight & Regulation

By: Editor (African Antitrust)

The South African Competition Commission recently contributed the following summary of its activities regarding the ‘hot topic’ of so-called Digital Markets and antitrust law to the “Compendium” (not AAT’s, the actual government enforcers’ compendium document resulting from the multilateral G7 meeting organized by the Bundeskartellamt in Germany).

Whether and how you have sought to use enforcement or non-enforcement tools, law
enforcement or regulatory action to address such issues. You may wish to highlight any
particularly relevant cases.

Recent cases
The Competition Commission of South Africa (CCSA) uses various competition enforcement tools to resolve concerns in digital markets, including unilateral conduct enforcement, merger regulation, market inquiries and advocacy. In November 2021, the CCSA referred an abuse of dominance case against Facebook Inc. (now Meta Platforms Inc) to the Competition Tribunal (Tribunal), for adjudication. The CCSA’s investigation found that Facebook enforced unduly restrictive access terms and conditions to its WhatsApp platform, against GovChat. This was to remove GovChat’s threat to Facebook’s own social networking position and WhatsApp’s monetisation strategies.

GovChat is a start-up online platform through which the South Africa government communicates with its citizens through mass push notifications on the WhatsApp platform. The GovChat platform also allows citizens to access information or services pertaining to various government services or programmes such as social grants, COVID19 services or to respond to surveys / polls to rate government services / performance. Thus, GovChat plays a very important role in the lives of South African citizens and is an important interface between the government and citizens. The CCSA found that Facebook’s conducts likely contravenes the following abuse of dominance provisions contained in section 8(1) of the Competition Act No. 89 of 1998 (as amended)…

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