There comes a point when the absence of an answer becomes part of the story. I think we have reached that point with South Africa’s 1kg parcel.
For the past six weeks FreightGuard has been looking into the rather strange position surrounding parcels weighing 1kg or less.
More than 100 million parcels move through South Africa’s private courier networks every year. Mordor Intelligence estimates that 76.02% of consignments fall into its “light parcel” category.* These parcels contain clothing, cosmetics, electronics, accessories, documents and all the smaller products that now make up such a large part of e-commerce.
Small-parcel delivery is no longer a niche business. It is part of everyday commerce in South Africa. But ask one very simple question: Are private couriers legally entitled to deliver a parcel weighing less than 1kg? Things suddenly become complicated.
For years, parcels weighing 1kg or less formed part of the postal services reserved for the South African Post Office.
Then, in December 2025, Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi published a determination removing “small parcels” from the reserved postal services framework.
You would have thought that settled the matter. Apparently not.
SAPO’s Business Rescue Practitioners subsequently maintained that SAPO’s exclusivity remained in place because ICASA still had to complete the necessary regulatory process. At the same time, ICASA’s own published information continued to state that only SAPO may deliver items weighing 1kg or less. Meanwhile private couriers continued doing what they have been doing for years — delivering them.
So we have the Minister removing small parcels from the reserved market, ICASA’s published information apparently saying they remain reserved, and an entire private courier industry carrying them every day.
We wanted to know which position was correct.
We asked the Business Rescue Practitioners
Rather than rely on what had been reported in the media, we wrote directly to SAPO’s Business Rescue Practitioners, Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons.
They had been reported as saying:
“This exclusivity is still currently in place, as ICASA must ratify directives via their regulatory approval processes. The determination of next steps rests with the Regulator and not with SAPO.”
Fair enough. But if that was the position, we wanted to understand the legal basis for it.
We asked them to identify the specific provision of the Postal Services Act, SAPO’s licence, an ICASA regulation or any other legal instrument which meant that the exclusivity remained in place despite the Minister’s December 2025 determination. We also asked what “ratification” ICASA still needed to undertake.
And we asked the obvious practical question:
If the BRPs were correct, does that mean a private courier delivering an ordinary parcel weighing less than 1kg could still be contravening the reserved postal services framework?
Our correspondence was read. We received no further response. So we went to ICASA.
We asked ICASA eight questions
On 16 September we wrote formally to ICASA.
We weren’t asking whether they thought SAPO should retain the 1kg monopoly. We weren’t asking them to agree with FreightGuard. We simply wanted to know what the current regulatory position is.
Our questions included:
- Can a licensed private courier legally collect, transport and deliver an ordinary parcel weighing 1kg or less in South Africa today?
- Has the Minister’s December 2025 determination been implemented?
- If there are further regulatory steps required, what are they?
- Why does ICASA’s published information continue to state that only SAPO may deliver items weighing 1kg or less?
- Are private couriers exposed to enforcement action for doing so?
- And has ICASA actually reached a final regulatory position following the Minister’s determination?
These are not complicated questions from an industry point of view. Either a private courier can legally deliver the parcel or it can’t.
ICASA did respond — but not to the questions
To be fair to ICASA, our correspondence was acknowledged. On 23 September we were told that the matter would be taken up with the relevant divisions. We waited.
On 1st October 2026, I followed up and explained that we had a deadline for the article and that I did not want to put ICASA in a bad light by publishing without having the full picture.
The following day we received this response:
“I have circulated the questions. Most people were on leave last week. They are coming back one by one this week. Hopefully there should be some response coming through.”
ICASA asked what our deadline was.
We delayed the article. We waited again. We followed up again.
I even offered to meet the appropriate person on Teams if that would make it easier to work through the questions.
At the time of writing, more than five weeks after our original request, we still don’t have the answers.
I am not suggesting that ICASA has refused to answer. They haven’t. There may be internal legal and regulatory issues that need to be considered before they respond. But surely after five weeks somebody should be able to answer the most basic question:
Can a private courier legally deliver a parcel weighing less than 1kg in South Africa today?
This is what makes the whole situation so strange.
Private courier companies aren’t waiting for the regulatory debate to be resolved, there is a practical reality.
They are collecting and delivering sub-1kg parcels every day. E-commerce businesses depend on them. Consumers use these services without giving the weight of their parcel a second thought. Courier companies have invested enormous amounts of money in infrastructure, vehicles, depots, technology, sortation systems and people to move these parcels.
Nobody at a courier depot stops a 750g parcel and asks whether it should legally be handed over to SAPO.
The commercial market has moved on. The regulatory position doesn’t appear to have moved with the same clarity.
There are really only three possible answers:
- If private couriers may legally deliver these parcels, say so.
- If they may not, the industry certainly needs to know.
- And if the Minister has changed the policy but there is still some regulatory process that ICASA needs to complete, tell us what that process is and when it is likely to be completed.
What is difficult to understand is why there should be no clear answer at all.
And then there is enforcement
This raises another rather obvious issue. If ICASA’s current position is still that parcels weighing 1kg or less are reserved for SAPO, what does that mean for the hundreds of private courier businesses delivering them?
Are they technically breaking the rules every time they deliver one? If they are, does ICASA intend to do anything about it? If they aren’t, why does ICASA’s published information still say that only SAPO may deliver these parcels? You can’t really have it both ways.
This isn’t about SAPO anymore
There is a temptation to turn this into another argument about whether SAPO should or shouldn’t have a monopoly. That isn’t the point.
The Minister has already made his policy position clear. The issue now is regulatory certainty. Courier companies need to know what they may legally carry. E-commerce businesses need to know that the delivery networks they use are operating within the regulatory framework. And regulators need to make the rules understandable to the industries they regulate.
It shouldn’t require a six-week investigation to establish whether a courier may legally deliver a 750g parcel from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
So where does that leave us?
- We asked SAPO’s Business Rescue Practitioners.
- We examined the Minister’s determination.
- We checked ICASA’s published position.
- And we asked ICASA directly.
We still don’t have a definitive answer.
Perhaps ICASA will respond after this article is published. I genuinely hope they do.
If they do, FreightGuard will publish their response. And if anything we have written in this series is incorrect, we will correct it.
But until then we are left with a very odd situation.
The Minister has moved to open the market. ICASA’s published information still appears to reserve it. Private couriers are delivering these parcels every day. And nobody seems prepared to tell the industry, unequivocally, which position applies.
The 1kg parcel may be small. The question surrounding it certainly isn’t.
And perhaps that is the most revealing conclusion to this series of all.
*Source: Mordor Intelligence, South Africa Courier, Express and Parcel (CEP) Market Report, January 2026. Mordor’s “light parcel” category is broader than the specific ≤1kg category discussed in this article.