MBABANE – The country’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Bill of 2025 needs to be strengthened by adopting South African penalties to save millions of Emalangeni.
This comes as statistics released by the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) revealed 418 reported copper theft cases between April and June 2025, which is an 8 per cent increase from the same period last year.
The Bill proposes a fine not exceeding E500 000 or a prison term of up to five years for general contraventions. These penalties increase to a maximum fine of E1 million or a 10-year prison term for offences that cause actual damage or pose a serious risk to public safety. Where an offence under Section 3 is committed by a body corporate, it (body corporate) shall upon conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding E5 million. In comparison, South Africa’s legislation provides for substantially higher sentences and fines. The Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, 2019, outlines penalties ranging from three to 20 years imprisonment.
The Criminal Matters Amendment Act, 2015, also allows for up to 30 years imprisonment or a fine not exceeding R100 million for a corporate body found guilty of essential infrastructure-related offences. This makes South Africa’s penalties, particularly for corporate entities, the highest among the two countries.
The South African legislation’s tiered approach to penalties, which provides for greater severity based on the nature and impact of the crime, could serve as a model for the country to strengthen its own laws.
The country’s stakeholders and legislators have an opportunity to adopt South Africa’s tiered and more stringent approach to criminal penalties, which could improve deterrence, particularly for organised criminals and corporate entities that facilitate or profit from infrastructure crime.
Extracting from South Africa’s legislation, this will have to involve incorporating a graduated sentencing framework, where the penalty is directly tied to the scale of the damage, the value of stolen property and the impact of the disruption on public services.
The stakeholders and legislators should seek to align the country’s draft Bill with developments, which will ensure that future submissions during the legislative process advocate for penalties that reflect the severity of such crimes and protect the nation’s vital assets.
Also, scrutiny of South Africa’s Act and the country’s Bill depict distinct similarities and dissimilarities in the penalties for infrastructure-related crimes. The similarities are that both countries’ legal frameworks include fines as a primary form of penalty for crimes against critical infrastructure. They both stipulate fines in conjunction with or as an alternative to imprisonment, indicating a shared approach to penalising offenders through both monetary and custodial measures.
While both nations recognise the importance of securing vital infrastructure, Eswatini’s draft legislation appears less comprehensive.
Both countries’ proposed legislation shares the primary objective of protecting physical structures, facilities and networks that are essential for the social, security, health and economic functioning of the country.
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