National Key Points Act, 1980

National Key Points Act, 1980
Act to provide for National Key Points and the safeguarding thereof and for matters connected therewith.
Citation	Act No. 102 of 1980
Enacted by	Parliament of South Africa
Date assented to	1 July 1980
Date commenced	25 July 1980
Amendments
National Key Points Amendment Act 44 of 1984 National Key Points Amendment Act 47 of 1985
Status: In force

The National Key Points Act, 1980 (Act No. 102 of 1980) is an act of the Parliament of South Africa that provides for the declaration and protection of sites of national strategic importance against sabotage, as determined by the Minister of Police (previously known as the Minister for Safety and Security) since 2004 and the Minister of Defence before that. The act was designed during apartheid to secretly arrange protection primarily for privately owned strategic sites. It enables the government to compel private owners, as well as state-owned corporations, to safeguard such sites owned by them at their own cost. The act, still in force and unamended since apartheid, came under the spotlight after President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla homestead was declared a National Key Point in 2010 amid controversy over public expenditure on upgrades to the property. As of 2013^[update], the act is officially under review.

In an apartheid-era debate on disinvestment from South Africa in 1990, chief representative of the African National Congress (ANC) to the United States Lindiwe Mabuza said the act contributed to institutionalised oppression of black South Africans. The ANC, which has been the country's ruling party since 1994, made a submission to a special Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing on the role of business during apartheid in 1997 in which it characterises the act as "the privatisation of repression" and states: "The National Key Points Act of 1980 created another network of collaboration between the apartheid security forces and the private sector." The act contributed to significant growth in the private security industry and "the integration of state and private sector security companies with a uniform security strategy".

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