Kwabantu AI

PAIA manual

This manual explains how to ask KWABANTU AI (Pty) Ltd for a record it holds, as the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (PAIA) requires, and summarises how we process personal information under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).

1. Who we are

KWABANTU AI (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2026/822146/07, Cape Town, South Africa. We run Kwaba, an SMS assistant that answers questions sent as an SMS starting with KWABA to 43366. Website: www.kwabantuai.co.za.

2. Information Officer

The director of the company is our Information Officer, registered with the Information Regulator. Send requests under PAIA or POPIA to privacy@kwabantuai.co.za, or post them to the address above.

3. The Regulator's guide to PAIA

The Information Regulator publishes a guide, in every official language, on how to use PAIA (section 10). It is available from the Regulator at inforegulator.org.za, Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191, POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za, 010 023 5200.

4. Records available without a request

Everything on this website, including the privacy policy, the terms and disclaimer and this manual.

5. Records available under other laws

Company records under the Companies Act, 2008 (CIPC), and records under the Income Tax Act and other tax laws (SARS), the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002, the Consumer Protection Act, 2008, and POPIA.

6. Records we hold

  • Company records: incorporation documents, share register, resolutions, contracts.
  • Financial records: bank, accounting and tax records.
  • Service records: short-lived records of SMS questions and answers and of daily use, as described in the privacy policy.
  • Technical records: the software and settings of the service.
  • Correspondence with users, suppliers and regulators.

7. How we process personal information (POPIA)

  • Purpose: to answer the questions people send to Kwaba, to apply the daily limit, to keep the service working and safe, and to meet our legal duties.
  • Whose information: people who send an SMS to Kwaba; suppliers and partners we deal with.
  • What information: for users, the mobile number, the messages sent and the answers returned, and basic usage counts. Users may include health or other sensitive details in a question; we use them only to answer that question. Kwaba is for people aged 18 or older.
  • Who receives it: trusted third parties that carry the messages and help produce an answer. We do not sell or share personal information for marketing.
  • Outside South Africa: some processing needed to answer a question happens outside South Africa, with those third parties bound by contract to protect the information to a standard similar to POPIA (POPIA section 72).
  • How long: chat history is deleted within two days of the last message, or at once on SMS KWABA STOP; other usage information within about a month.
  • Security: encrypted connections, access limited to the people who run Kwaba, and as little information kept for as short a time as possible.

8. How to request a record

  1. Fill in the Regulator's Form 2 (request for access to a record), available from the Regulator's website, and send it to the Information Officer by email or post. Say what record you want, which right you need it to protect or exercise (PAIA section 50), and how you would like to receive it.
  2. Pay the request fee set by the PAIA Regulations (R100 for a private body) unless you are asking for your own personal information, which is free. If finding or copying the record takes work, we will tell you the access fee on Form 3 before we start, at the rates in the Regulations, and may ask for a deposit if it will take more than six hours.
  3. We decide within 30 days, which we may extend once by up to 30 days for a large or complex request, and tell you the outcome on Form 3. We may refuse access only on a ground in PAIA (for example another person's privacy or commercial confidentiality), and we will give the reason.

9. Your personal information

You can ask what we hold about you, and to correct or delete it, or object to how we use it, free of charge, by emailing privacy@kwabantuai.co.za. SMS KWABA STOP to 43366 deletes your chat history at once.

10. If you are unhappy

A private company has no internal appeal. You may complain to the Information Regulator (details in section 3) or apply to a court.

11. This manual

Available on this website, at our address on request, and from the Information Regulator. We update it when our processing changes.