A protest outside the Constitutional Court in November 2024 when lawyers for Blind SA requested that a court-crafted copyright exception for braille and other accessible formats be extended. Archive photo: Ihsaan Haffejee.
- Blind SA is taking trade and industry minister Parks Tau to court for not acceding to the Marrakesh Treaty.
- Until South Africa joins the treaty, blind and visually impaired people here can’t use international digital libraries, including the large ones in the US.
- Tau says the Copyright Amendment Bill must become law first, but Blind SA argues the Constitutional Court has already made the existing law compliant.
Blind SA is taking trade and industry minister Parks Tau to court for not acceding to the Marrakesh Treaty, which would give blind and visually impaired people access to international digital libraries.
Represented by SECTION27, Blind SA wants the Pretoria High Court to order the minister to develop a “reasonable plan” that will ensure the issue is speedily tabled before the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces.
Blind SA wants the plan developed within one month of the court order.
The Marrakesh Visually Impaired Persons (VIP) Treaty, which was adopted in 2013 and came into force in 2016, allows for cross-border access to accessible published works for people who are blind or visually impaired.
The largest digital libraries are based in the USA, which is a party to the treaty. They cannot be accessed by people in South Africa until the government formally accedes to it. 
The minister has until the end of this week to file the record of the reasons for the decision not to accede to the treaty and to file any notice of intention to oppose the Blind SA court case.
Blind SA’s CEO, Votelwa Majola, said in her affidavit that the treaty requires parties to ensure their own national copyright laws enable access to accessible format libraries.
“But there is a catch,” she said. “In order for a person in one part of the world to be able to access a title in a digital library in another country, both countries must be party to the Marrakesh VIP Treaty.”
South Africa is not yet a party to the treaty because, while the government has always made clear its intention to accede to it, the minister has claimed this cannot happen until the Copyright Amendment Bill, amending the existing Copyright Act, has been enacted and is in force.
Blind SA argues the minister does not need to wait, because the existing act has been “appropriately amended” by the Constitutional Court to comply with the Treaty, pending the enactment of the amendment bill.
In 2022, the Constitutional Court declared the Copyright Act unconstitutional because it did not include accessibility for blind people. In 2024, Parliament passed the Copyright Amendment Bill, which added section 19D to ensure accessibility. But it was not signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who referred it to the Constitutional Court.
Blind SA then brought an urgent application, which ultimately led to a May 2025 court order reading section 19D into the original Copyright Act. This will stay valid until the amendment act comes into force.
The Constitutional Court’s addition of section 19D provides for specified copyright exceptions and safeguards against misuse, particularly in international transfers.
The court ruled on the President’s referral in June this year, striking down five unrelated subsections and upholding the rest.
Majola said the court was “silent” on the next steps to be followed.
“It must follow that the ball is back in the Minister’s court, awaiting a decision as to what will be tabled in the National Assembly, and by when,” Majola said.
Majola said that, “given the extensive consultation process that Parliament has already conducted, as well as the Constitutional Court’s findings,” the minister should reintroduce the amendment bill “with all of its current provisions except for those five subsections declared invalid by the Constitutional Court.”
But waiting for the bill would be time-consuming and would leave blind and visually impaired people in limbo, denied access to literary and artistic works in accessible formats, Majola said.
In June 2026, Minister Tau had responded to correspondence from Blind SA, saying that the department had been advised to “adhere to the legislative process” in order for South Africa to “meet its international obligations”.
Tau said legal opinion from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and the Department of International Relations and Co-operation, was that the amendment bill needed to be enacted and in force before South Africa could accede to the treaty.
Blind SA’s attorneys had written back saying that he had been wrongly advised and asking that he reconsider his position.
No substantive response had been received.
Majola said there was an urgent need to bring an end to the rights violations which had lasted almost a decade.
While the apex court’s reading in of section 19D was a “landmark development”, it could not, without accession to the treaty, deal decisively with the “book famine”, she said.
While practically, it made sense for the state to have its legislative ducks in a row, it was not required to do so under the treaty, given the “reading in” of section 19D, said Majola.
Tau’s decision was based on a “fundamentally flawed understanding of the law”, making it unlawful and irrational and providing the basis for the court to review and set it aside, Majola said.
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