Privacy Policy

Introduction:

Your privacy matters. At amandla.mobi, we are fully committed to protecting the personal information you provide through your participation in our campaigns and movement-building work. We recognise our accountability under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013 (“POPIA”), and are dedicated to ensuring that your personal information is collected and used in a reasonable, lawful, and transparent manner.

Central to our commitment to protecting your privacy, we pledge never to sell your personal information.

This policy explains how we obtain, use and disclose your personal information, in accordance with the requirements of the POPIA, and our own commitment to privacy.

In this policy, any reference to “amandla.mobi”, “we” or “us” is to “amandla.mobi”, a non-profit organisation that supports a growing movement led by low-income Black women shifting power toward a more just, equitable South Africa.

The main reason we collect personal information:

amandla.mobi exists to allow anyone to make their voices heard through campaign actions, which include petitions, public comments, protests or other civic actions. Each campaign engages decision-makers in positions of power with the campaign's demands. To demonstrate public support for a campaign, we may be required to deliver your name to the decision-makers. Most actions you can take with amandla.mobi, we ask that you provide information cardinal to the purpose of our campaigns, like your name, email, mobile number and province. This helps us not only to verify your identity but also to perform the functions required to effectively run the campaigns, our organisation, and give effect to the main aim of amandla.mobi.

We will delete your personal information after the campaign has ended unless you agree to receive ongoing communication from amandla.mobi to your email and mobile phone number or where we are legally required to retain the information for a longer period. You can unsubscribe (opt-out) at any time by clicking the unsubscribe button in our emails or replying STOP to messages to your mobile phone number. The below sections of the privacy policy provide much further detail on how we obtain, use and disclose your personal information.

Who we are:

Founded on the belief that every mobile phone can be a tool to build democracy, amandla.mobi is a growing movement led by low-income Black women shifting power toward a just, equitable South Africa.

What is personal information and special personal information:

Personal Information, according to POPIA, means information relating to an identifiable, living, natural person, and where it is applicable, an identifiable, existing juristic person, including, but not limited to –

Information relating to the race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, national, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental health, well-being, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language, and birth of the person;
Information relating to the education or the medical, financial, criminal, or employment history of the person;
Any identifying number, symbol, e-mail address, telephone number, location information, online identifier, or other particular assignment to the person;
The biometric information of the person;
The personal opinions, views, or preferences of the person;
Correspondence sent by the person that would reveal the contents of the original correspondence;
The views or opinions of another individual about the person; and
The name of the person if it appears with other personal information relating to the person or if the disclosure of the name itself would reveal information about the person.

In terms of POPIA, the justification ground which we base our processing on consists of the following:

- You have consented thereto, or if you are a child, your parent or guardian provided the consent on your behalf;

- The processing is necessary to carry out actions for the conclusion or performance of our work to which the data subject is a party;

- The processing complies with an obligation imposed by law on the organisation;

- The processing protects a legitimate interest of the data subject;

- The processing is necessary for the proper performance of a public law duty by the organisation; or

- The processing is necessary for pursuing the legitimate interests of the organisation or of a third party to whom the information is supplied.

Special personal information refers to the following categories of information:

- Religious and philosophical beliefs;

- Race;

- Ethnic origin;

- Trade union membership;

- Political beliefs;

- Health including physical or mental health, disability, and medical history;

- Biometric information;

- Criminal behaviour where it relates to the alleged commission of any offence or the proceedings relating to that offence.

We will process special personal information in the following instances:

- You have consented to the processing (in circumstances where we are legally obliged to obtain your consent); or

- It is necessary to exercise or defend a right or obligation in law; or

- It is necessary to comply with an international legal obligation of public interest; or

- It is for certain historical, research, or statistical purposes that would not adversely affect your privacy; or

- You have deliberately made your personal information public.

The type of personal information we collect, and how we use your information:

The below list is not a comprehensive list, but sets out the typical information that we are required to collect from you, our users, from our suppliers or service providers, as well as from our employees, in order to do what we need to do.

Users

We need your information:

For the purpose of our campaigns to engage decision-makers;
To provide you with our services;
For legal and regulatory compliance;
To communicate with you and to send you necessary documentation and reports, etc.;
To reach you for service-related communication;
To verify your identity;
To meet our operational needs;
To keep accurate records and conduct internal audits.

User Data elements:

Contact information, such as:

Your first and last name;
E-mail, postal and/or physical address;
Contact numbers (landline and/or mobile);
Which province you reside in, so that if we are doing a campaign in your province, we may inform you.

Suppliers/ Service Providers

We need your information:

To review quotes;
To process purchase orders;
For service procurement;
For communication purposes;
To identify and distinguish your business;
For legal and regulatory compliance;
For tax related purposes;
For payment purposes.
To meet our operational needs;
To keep accurate records and conduct internal audits.

Suppliers/ Service Providers Data elements:

Identifying information, such as:

Entity Name and trading as name or Individual’s Name and Surname;
Entity registration number or Individual’s identity number;

Contact information, such as:

E-mail, postal and/or physical address;
Contact numbers (landline and/or mobile);

Transaction information, such as:

Banking details;
Contact person’s details;
Contact person’s designation;
VAT numbers;
Invoicing required details.

Employees/ Potential Employees or Campaigner Fellows

We need your information for:

3.1 Potential employees:

To facilitate the recruitment process and to determine employment suitability;
To verify your identity, eligibility to work, criminal and/or educational background;
To communicate the outcome of your application process.

3.2 Employees:

For employment contract purposes;
To remunerate you;
For legal compliance related purposes, like employment equity, BEE, and labour related legislation;
For tax related purposes;
To communicate with you for work related purposes;
To communicate with your relatives in case of an emergency;
For inclusion and diversity purposes;
For further education and upskilling;
For coaching and mentoring;
For labour related purposes such as leave, disciplinary, incapacity or operational required purposes.
For service delivery required purposes, such as to place you at our customers, etc.

3.3 Campaigner Fellows or Prospective Campaigner Fellows

To facilitate the selection and recruitment process to determine your suitability for the Campaigner Fellowship;
To verify your identity, eligibility for the Campaigner Fellowship;
To communicate the outcome of each round of the selection process;
For the Campaigner Fellowship contract;
To pay your stipend;
For legal compliance, including where appropriate, tax related purposes.

Employees or Fellows/ Potential Employees or Fellows Data Elements:

Identifying information, such as:

Full name and surname;
Identity / Passport / Work Visa / Asylum numbers;
Employee number.
Date of birth;
Gender;

Contact information, such as:

Contact numbers (landline and/or mobile numbers);
E-mail, physical and/or postal address;

Emergency contact information, such as:

Full name and Surname of emergency contact;
Emergency contact relationship;
Contact numbers (landline and/or mobile numbers);

Remuneration information, such as:

Banking details;

Background information, such as:

Curriculum Vitae;
Spoken and written language;
Academic qualifications;
Criminal history;
Trade Information;
Work experience and employment history;
Personality Type / Psychometric tests;

Legislation required information, such as:

Race / ethnicity;
Disability;
Employment, skills, and related information
Tax related information;

Collection of information by “Cookies”

Your information and data may be automatically collected through the standard operation of the Internet servers and through the use of "cookies." "Cookies" are small text files a website can use to recognise repeat users, facilitate the user's ongoing access to and use of the website and allow a website to track usage behaviour and compile aggregate data that will allow content improvements and targeted advertising. Cookies are not programs that come onto your system and damage files.

Generally, cookies work by assigning a unique number to you that has no meaning outside the assigning site. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to deny or accept the cookie feature; however, you should note that cookies may be necessary to provide you with certain features (e.g., customised delivery of information) available on our websites.

How we get the personal information and what we use it for:

We will use your personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected for and agreed with you. In addition, where necessary your information may be retained for legal or user experience optimisation purposes.

We may also collect your information for the following purposes:

To gather contact information;
To confirm and verify your identity or to verify that you are an authorised user for security purposes;
For the detection and prevention of fraud, crime, money laundering or other malpractice;
To conduct market or user satisfaction research or for statistical analysis;
For audit and record keeping purposes;
In connection with legal proceedings;
For audit and bookkeeping purposes;
For service delivery purposes.

We may collect or obtain personal information about you:

directly from you;
during the course of our interactions with you;
when you visit and/or interact with our website or any other social media platforms or IT services;
from a third party who is authorised to share that information;
via a mobile or other software app developed for, or used by amandla.mobi.

We may share this information with:

We may employ third-party companies and individuals to facilitate our service, to provide the service on our behalf, to perform service-related services, to provide security and IT infrastructure, to help us do our organisational work or to assist us in analysing how our service is used.

These third parties may have access to your personal information, but only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose. We value your personal information and our service providers are closely selected to ensure that they comply with the relevant safeguards and technical measures in relation to your personal information.

As an employee, we may need to share your information with service providers or approved partners. Additionally, because there are occasions where we may engage with users in different communities, we may also need to share your personal information with users to fulfil our service commitments to them.

We may also use third-party service providers to monitor and analyse the use of our service.

We may also disclose your information:

Where we have a duty or a right to disclose in terms of law or industry codes;
Where we believe it is necessary to protect our rights.
We may need to share your information when we believe it is required by law, legal process or to help protect the rights and safety of you, us, or others. We attempt to notify members about legal demands for their data when appropriate in our judgment unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. We may dispute such demands when we believe, at our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague, or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand.

How we store your personal information:

Your information is securely stored:

We are legally obliged to provide adequate protection for the personal information we hold and to stop unauthorised access and use of personal information. We will, on an on-going basis, continue to review our security controls and related processes to ensure that your personal information remains secure.

Our security policies and procedures cover:

Physical security;
Computer and network security;
Access to personal information;
Secure communications;
Security in contracting out activities or functions;
Retention and disposal of information;
Acceptable usage of personal information;
Governance and regulatory issues;
Monitoring access and usage of private information;
Investigating and reacting to security incidents.

When we contract with third parties, we impose appropriate security, privacy and confidentiality obligations on them, in the absence of an agreement with the third party that protects personal information, to ensure that personal information that we remain responsible for, is kept secure.

Processing of personal information of children:

The amandla.mobi website and mobile channels are for users 13 years old and up.

Our website is not aimed at children under 13 years old, and we will not collect, use, provide or process in any other form any personal information of children under the age of 13 deliberately.

We therefore also ask you, if you are under 13 years old, please do not send us your personal information (for example, your name, address and email address). If you are under 13 years old and you nevertheless wish to ask a question or use this website in anyway which requires you to submit your personal information please get your parent or guardian to do so on your behalf.

Access to personal information beyond our control:

There are rare instances where a well meaning family member, friend or colleague will enter your name, email address and/or mobile number into our website, without your consent. Such actions are beyond our control, as we are unable to verify if it was indeed you who entered your personal information.

In South Africa, it is common for mobile networks to recycle mobile numbers that have not been in use for a certain period of time. On rare occasions what can happen is that you receive a message to your mobile number from amandla.mobi, despite having ever provided your mobile number to amandla.mobi and opt-ed in to receive messages. Ofte, this is because your mobile number was previously used by someone else, before it was recycled and your mobile network provided that mobile number to you. Such actions are beyond our control, as we are not notified by mobile networks when mobile numbers are recycled.

If you do not wish to receive further information from amandla.mobi, we encourage you to opt-out of the communications.

Data retention and your privacy rights and obligations:

We keep most of your personal information while we still have a purpose, we need to provide you with services or where we are legally obligated to do so. We will also keep your information where you have agreed for us to do so, or have given your consent that we are allowed to do so.

We may be required to keep some of your information even after our campaigns has ended, if it is reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations, meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, maintain security, prevent fraud and abuse, enforce our other user agreements, or fulfil your request to object to our processing of your information.

You have rights in connection with your personal information. You have many choices about how your information is collected, used, and shared.

In certain circumstances, by law, you have the right to:

Request access to your information: You are entitled to access your personal information by sending a written request to [email protected] which is monitored by the information officer. There are some exemptions, which means you may not always receive all the information we process. When we can give you a copy it might be done at a certain fee, which will also be communicated to you at the time of your query.
Change or correct information: You have the right to ask us to correct or supplement any of your personal information that may be outdated, have changed or where they are inaccurate. ,We will undertake to attend to the necessary updates as soon as practicable.
Delete information: You can ask us to destroy, delete, or remove personal information under certain circumstances. The Information Officer, Paul Mason, will consider your request in light of any other laws, regulations, or factors prohibiting the destruction of your personal data.
Object to processing: You can do this where we are relying on your legitimate interest, public interest, or our legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your data for direct marketing purposes or where you have given your consent for the specific processing and you want to retract your consent. Retracting your consent does not invalidate the information we lawfully processed while we had your consent to do so.
Request the restriction of processing: You can ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.

Please contact us at [email protected] if you wish to make a request.

Changes to our privacy notice:

Changes to the privacy notice apply to your use of our services. We may modify this privacy notice from time to time, as required by changes in legislation. When material changes are made, we will provide notice through our services, or by other means, to provide you the opportunity to review the changes before they become effective.

You acknowledge that your continued use of our services after we publish our changes to this privacy notice means that the collection, use, and sharing of your personal information is subject to the updated privacy notice.

Other important information:

Security:

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information on a business need-to-know basis, and subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Transborder information transfers:

In some cases, the third parties we use to provide services to you may be located outside your country of residence (for example, in a cloud service, system or server). The transfer of your personal information across South African borders may be required; however, it will only be effected if the transaction requires transborder processing. In such instances, the personal information will only be transferred in accordance with the requirements of POPIA and/or other South African legislative requirements, and/or if the data subject consents to the transferring of personal information to a third party in a foreign country. In the event of transborder transferring of personal information we will take the necessary steps to ensure the processing of personal information is done in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction the information is transferred to and/or that binding corporate rules or binding agreements are in place that provide for levels of protection at an adequate level in accordance with the principles of POPIA.

Some of the personal information that is collected automatically is collected by third parties whose technology we use to provide website functionality and acquire website analytics information. Some of these third parties will be outside the borders of South Africa, and your information will be stored outside the borders of South Africa. We use website analytics, and the information collected through this third party will be kept on the servers used by the website analytics provider.

How to complain:

If you have any concerns about how amandla.mobi uses and processes your personal information, you can submit a complaint to us at [email protected]. Our Information Officer will attend to complaints and administer the process.

If you feel that your complaint has not been resolved to your satisfaction, you may also lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator.

Our details, as well as those of the Information Regulator, are set out below.

Our contact information:

Should you have a query, please send an email to: [email protected]

Our Information Officer: Paul Mason

Email address: [email protected]

P.O.Box: Postnet Suite 6

Private Bag X4

Braamfontein 2001

Johannesburg

South Africa

Phone Number: 087 822 2956 (office number)

The Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) Manual

The Information Regulator's contact information:

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the South African Information Regulator. See the Information Regulator contact details below.

Physical Address: Woodmead North Office Park,

54 Maxwell Drive,

Woodmead,

Johannesburg

Postal Address: P.O Box 31533, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2017

Website: https://inforegulator.org.za/

POPIA Complaints email: [email protected]

PAIA Complaints email: [email protected]

General enquiries email: [email protected]