South Africa wants natural scientists on a register. The draft penalty for staying off it is prison.
A draft South African law would require 'practising natural scientists' to register with the state-backed SACNASP or face up to a year in prison. Two senior researchers told Nature they learned of it only after the consultation window closed. The principle of licensing scientific advice is arguable; the text's ambiguity about who counts as practising, and a custodial penalty untethered from any evidence of harm, are the parts other countries should read carefully.
South Africa has published a draft law that would make registration with a government-backed regulator compulsory for "practising natural scientists", with a penalty of up to one year in prison for those who do not comply. Nature reported the bill on 19 August and followed it with an editorial on 26 August arguing the principle is defensible and the current text is not.
The facts
- The bill is dated 16 March 2026. It repeals the 2003 legislation that created the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions (SACNASP) and clarifies the council's purpose and governance.
- It defines "practising" as "rendering of a service or provision of advice in the natural scientific profession", whether paid or unpaid.
- People who teach at a recognised educational institution, and those who develop government policy on the natural sciences, are exempt. The text does not say whether an academic who also consults or advises is covered.
- Failure to register could carry a criminal record and up to a year in jail. The bill does not specify the process by which a scientist would be prosecuted.
- Public comment ran from March to May 2026 and has closed. No date has been set for parliamentary debate.
- About 21,000 scientists are currently registered with SACNASP across 26 disciplines. No figure exists for how many of the country's academics are not.
- Cost: full professional membership is 1,920 rand a year (about US$119), plus a one-off registration charge of 2,560 rand for South Africans and 5,410 rand for foreign scientists. South Africa's minimum wage is 30.23 rand an hour, roughly 5,200 to 5,900 rand a month.
SACNASP acting chief executive Matshidiso Matabane told Nature: "Our goal is not to be gatekeepers, but to professionalize the natural sciences through registration and regulation." SACNASP referred questions about the bill itself to the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, which had not responded by the time Nature published.
The scientists are divided, and several had not heard of it
Nithaya Chetty, a physicist and dean of science at the University of the Witwatersrand, is not registered and learned of the bill when Nature contacted him. He called it "a money-making scheme" and said the draft "gives the SACNASP board considerable future power".
Lise Korsten, a plant scientist at the University of Pretoria and a former president of the African Academy of Sciences, is also unregistered and was unaware of the jail provision, but supports accountability for scientists who consult. Fraudulent experts are "a big problem", she said. "It's for public protection."
That two senior figures in South African science first heard about a bill affecting them from a journalist, after the consultation window had already closed, is itself one of the more consequential facts here.
Analysis
Licensing exists for engineers, physicians and environmental-health officers because a bad decision in those roles injures an identifiable person. Extending that logic to scientific advice is coherent: the market for expert opinion has no entry requirement, and a fabricated expert is a real harm, not a hypothetical one.
Where it strains is in the definition. "Provision of advice in the natural scientific profession", unpaid included, is broad enough to reach a researcher answering a journalist, sitting on a school board, or writing a public explainer. The law exempts teaching and policy work, which is where the state expects scientific communication to happen, and is silent on the ordinary case of an academic who does both. A licensing regime whose boundary is ambiguous does not merely risk unfair enforcement; it invites self-censorship, because the safe response to an unclear rule with a prison term attached is to say less.
Nature's editorial makes two structural objections worth separating from the criminal one. SACNASP is a government agency whose board the government appoints, and professional standards set by a body the state controls carry a different kind of authority than standards set by practitioners. And imprisonment for a registration failure, absent any evidence of harm, is out of proportion with how comparable professions handle non-compliance: fines, contract termination, removal from the register.
None of that argues against a register. It argues that the case for one is a case about competence and public protection, and a penalty untethered from harm does not follow from it.
Why this is worth watching from outside South Africa
If the bill passes, South Africa would be among the first countries to make professional registration a legal condition of practising natural science as a whole. Other governments have considered it; none have come this close. The text that gets voted on will be read elsewhere as a template, including the parts that are ambiguous.
No parliamentary date has been set, so there is time for the clarification Nature is asking for. What to watch: whether the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation reopens consultation, whether the definition of "practising" is narrowed, and whether the custodial penalty survives.