Privacy Policy

About this website

This website is operated by the Office of Dr Malusi Gigaba. Its purpose is to provide public access to Dr Gigaba's record of service, published writing, public engagements, and contact channels. It is not a commercial website and does not carry advertising.

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we use it, and what your rights are under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

What personal information we collect

We collect personal information only where you voluntarily provide it through one of the following channels:

• Newsletter subscription form — first name, last name, and email address.
• Contact form — your name, email address, telephone number (optional), and, depending on the desk you select, your organisation or role, ward or area, and the details of your enquiry. The Editorial desk may also accept supporting documents you choose to attach.
• Digital Library contribution (a category within the Contact form) — for a written work: your name and affiliation, and the article itself (either pasted as text, or read from a PDF or Word file in your browser), together with related details such as motivation, prior-publication status, and declarations. For an offer of in-kind support (equipment, space, services, or volunteering): your organisation and role, a website or professional/social profile link, a description of what you are offering, any conditions attached, and — optionally — photographs of what is offered.
• Invitation request form — identity and contact details, organisation information, and event details.
• Bookings enquiry form — name, organisation, email address, telephone number, event details, and date.

We do not collect sensitive personal information (as defined under POPIA), biometric data, or financial account details. We do not accept monetary or financial contributions through these forms. We do not use tracking cookies beyond those set by our analytics providers (see § 05 below).

A fuller, form-by-form breakdown — including the terms that apply to Digital Library contributions — is set out in our Terms of Use & Privacy Notice.

How we use your personal information

Personal information submitted through this website is used solely for the purpose for which it was provided:

• Newsletter subscriptions are used to deliver the newsletter to your inbox.
• Contact and enquiry submissions are used to route your message to the relevant desk and to respond to you.
• Digital Library contributions are used to evaluate, verify and — where a written work is accepted — publish your contribution, with attribution, in accordance with our Terms.
• Offers of in-kind support are reviewed and vetted by the Office before any acceptance. They are never accepted automatically, and any photographs you attach are used only to assess your offer and are not published without review.
• Invitation and bookings enquiries are used to respond to your request and, where applicable, to confirm arrangements.

We do not sell, rent, share, or transfer your personal information to third parties for marketing or commercial purposes. We do not use your information for automated profiling or automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

Third-party processors

Depending on which form you use, your submission is delivered and stored through the processors below. Each is bound by its own privacy terms and is used only to receive, route, or store your submission on our behalf:

• Newsletter subscription is processed by Formspree, a US-based form-handling service.
• Contact, Digital Library contribution, invitation and bookings submissions are stored using Google Firebase (Realtime Database), on Google infrastructure hosted in the European Union. Email notifications to the Office are sent via EmailJS, and brief internal alerts to the Office team are sent via CallMeBot (Signal and WhatsApp). These forms are protected against automated abuse by hCaptcha.
• Documents and photos you attach to a Digital Library contribution are read and compressed in your own browser. For documents (using the Mammoth and PDF.js libraries) only the extracted text is transmitted; for in-kind photos only a small compressed image is transmitted. The original file is not uploaded to or stored on our servers.

We do not share your submission data with any other third party except where required by law.

International transfer: because Firebase stores data on Google infrastructure in the European Union, your information may be processed outside South Africa. The European Union is recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection, consistent with the conditions for transborder information flows under POPIA § 72. This is addressed further in § 8 of our Terms of Use & Privacy Notice.

Analytics and site performance

This website uses Google Tag Manager and ContentSquare to collect anonymous, aggregated data about how visitors interact with the site — including pages visited, time on page, and navigation patterns. This data is used to improve the website and is not linked to any identifiable individual.

These services may set cookies on your device. No personally identifiable information is transmitted to these services through standard site usage. For more information, refer to Google's Privacy Policy.

Your rights under POPIA

Under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you;
• Request correction of inaccurate or outdated information;
• Request deletion of your information where processing is no longer justified;
• Object to the processing of your personal information;
• Withdraw consent at any time (including unsubscribing from the newsletter);
• Lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa at inforegulator.org.za.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at the address below.

Security

This website is served over HTTPS. Form submissions are transmitted over encrypted connections. We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against unauthorised access, disclosure, or loss. Submissions are accessible only to authorised members of the Office team on a need-to-know basis. Digital Library contributions and offers of in-kind support are reviewed by authorised staff before any use, acceptance, or publication. Where a third-party processor is involved, we rely on their security commitments as described in their published privacy policies.

Contact and enquiries

For any privacy enquiries, requests to access or correct your personal information, or complaints about how we handle your data:

Email: enquiries@drmalusigigaba.org
Website: drmalusigigaba.org/contact

We will respond to all privacy enquiries within 21 days.