Mapping when the list is set by statute

Influence and interest used honestly

Influence and interest scoring is the standard grid, and Tractivity carries it alongside sentiment tracking and segmentation. Score every stakeholder against attributes you define, compare up to three at a time, and watch the scores move across project phases.

It is useful for planning effort. It is not a reason to engage someone less than the statute requires. A grid that has quietly become a reason to under-notify a low-influence group is a grid that will be produced in a review. Use it to decide depth, not coverage: everyone Regulation 41 of the EIA Regulations requires you to notify gets notice, and the grid decides who gets a meeting on site and who gets a letter.

Segmentation that survives a review

Segments are live queries over the register rather than static lists, so a segment built in March still contains the right people in November. Every send is recorded against the people it reached at that moment, so you can show exactly who received which notice, on which date, with proof of service. That record does not change when the segment does.

Engagement challenges in South Africa are often brought as reviews under the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act (PAJA), and section 6(2)(b) makes failure to comply with a mandatory and material procedure a ground of review. The defence is documentary.

Geography, wards and municipal boundaries

Addresses, wards and municipal boundaries come from the data you hold, and the register can be segmented by any of them.

Ward committees under the Municipal Structures Act, chaired by the ward councillor with up to ten other members, are a structure you can model as organisations with linked people rather than as a free-text note. That is what makes a ward-level report possible later.

Traditional councils and informal rights

Traditional councils and the holders of informal land rights belong in the same register as everyone else, not in an annex. Model a council as an organisation with its members linked to it, record each rights holder individually, and keep consultation and consent as separate records against each person.

That separation matters. In Baleni v Minister of Mineral Resources (2018), the High Court held that the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act requires a community's full and informed consent before a mining right is granted, and that consultation under the MPRDA was not enough. If you cannot show who holds the rights and who consented, the process is exposed. The mining and resources page sets out where that bites hardest.

Councils are organisations, and POPIA protects organisations as well as individuals, so their records need the same care. Our POPIA and stakeholder data page explains how.