Government is set to review the Post Office’s monopoly over delivering sub-1kg items, a rule that is already widely ignored by the logistics industry.

The department of communications & digital technologies has invited public participation in a planned review of “reserved postal services” as defined in the Postal Services Act. These are the services that only the Post Office has a legal right to provide in South Africa.

The rationale behind reserving certain services is to protect revenues for the Post Office, providing the bankrupt state-owned entity with a monopoly that will help subsidise its mandate to rural and outlying communities even if it is not profitable for it to do so.

The Post Office’s monopoly on sub-1kg parcels, although widely ignored, is one of the monopoly services that will form part of the review.

The communications department this week released a discussion document to assist stakeholders before their inputs are submitted to the department.

“The purpose of this discussion document is to solicit comments and inputs from stakeholders on the review of the Post Office’s exclusive right to provide reserved services and the feasibility of liberalising the postal sector in the country,” said the document.

“This research is therefore aimed at exploring the relevance and effectiveness of exclusivity as a funding mechanism to ensure universal postal services and explore how it should be defined and dealt with given the changing environment, market and customer dynamics, socioeconomic contributions, and possible policy changes.”

Monopoly extended

The Post Office’s monopoly on the delivery of sub-1kg parcels was extended to the end of April 2025 by former communications minister Mondli Gungubele last year. These parcels are defined as follows:

Length: 456mm
Width: 324mm
Thickness: 100mm

Cylinders having a maximum length of 458mm and 100mm thickness and a mass of up to 1kg are also regarded as “letters”.

Other services to be reviewed include the conveyance of all letters, postcards, printed matter, small parcels and packages; the issuing and sale of postage stamps; and the provision of roadside collection and address boxes.

Read: Post Office gets emergency short-term bailout

The review comes at a time when the future of the Post Office hangs in the balance. Having been in business rescue – a form of bankruptcy protection – since July 2023, national treasury last month allocated the embattled entity with a “virement” of R150-million.

Khusela Diko, chair of the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications, said the virement was simply not enough to ensure the Post Office survives for long.

“The funding is too little to make a meaningful impact as it only sustains the operations of Sapo (the Post Office) for one additional month and does not go far enough to address the challenges it’s facing,” Diko said in a statement at the time.

Last September, business rescue practitioners Anoosh Rooplal and Juanita Damons told parliament that the embattled organisation would have no alternative but to be placed into liquidation should a R3.8-billion bailout not be received by last November.

The state-owned company’s fate looked all but sealed when national treasury excluded the proposed bailout from the medium-term budget policy outlook statement in October, with finance minister Enoch Godongwana encouraging the department of communications to “find the money” to assist the entity. Little mention was made of the Post Office in Wednesday’s budget documents. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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