This page explains how the Ward 2 Development Forum handles personal information for this site and for its planned yearly survey. It follows the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
Who keeps the records
The Forum is responsible for the information collected for this site. Michael Haupt keeps the records on the Forum’s behalf and handles all requests about them. You can reach him through the Contact page.
What we collect
- Submissions. The messages, voice notes, emails, documents, and photos you send us about an initiative.
- The contact register. The name, phone number, and email address of the person who runs each initiative, so the moderators can check facts and send updates. This register is private.
- Consent records. A note of whether each person agreed to have a contact channel shown on the site, and when.
- Right-of-reply messages. Our messages with any person or organisation that an entry describes, and their replies.
- Survey answers. If the Forum runs its yearly survey, the answers households give. See The yearly valley survey below.
- Website visits. The site counts visits with Plausible Analytics, which does not use cookies and does not identify individual visitors. See Other services the site uses below.
Why we collect it
We use this information only to:
- write and check entries for this site
- give people and organisations named in an entry a chance to respond
- contact the people who run initiatives when their entry needs updating
- show a public contact channel, when the person has agreed to it
- run the yearly valley survey and publish its results, if the Forum agrees to run it
We do not sell, share, or use this information for marketing.
What appears on the site
Published entries describe initiatives. They do not show:
- who submitted the entry
- phone numbers, email addresses, or home addresses, unless the person agreed to have one contact channel shown
- the names of people who use care services, such as counselling, addiction, or GBV support
Photos are published only when everyone pictured has agreed. A parent or guardian must agree for anyone under 18.
The yearly valley survey
The Forum plans to run a household survey once a year, starting in 2027. The Forum has not yet agreed to it. This section sets out how the survey will handle information if it goes ahead. The idea is described on The Yearly Valley Survey.
What the survey collects
- Answers about the household: how many people live there, life in the valley, services, skills, land used for food, and where the household’s money comes from and is spent. The survey never asks for amounts of money.
- The village where the home is.
- A code for the fieldworker who asked the questions, and the date and time of the visit.
- Only if the household agrees separately: the family’s heritage and population group.
The survey does not collect names, addresses, phone numbers, ID numbers, or the location of the home.
Why the survey collects it
Survey answers are used only to publish results for each village, to see how life in the valley changes from year to year, and to show government and investors what the valley has to offer. They are never used to contact a household, and they are never sold or used for marketing.
Heritage and population group
POPIA treats race and ethnic origin as special personal information. It may be collected only on the grounds the Act allows, such as the person’s consent. The survey asks about heritage and population group:
- at the very end, after all the other questions
- only after a separate question asking whether the household agrees to answer
- as optional questions that anyone may skip
The answers never decide which questions a household is asked. They are used only to see whether life is changing in the same way for everyone. They are never published for a single household.
Keeping households anonymous
- Results are published only for whole villages. Small hamlets are grouped together.
- No result is published for a group of fewer than 10 households, including any result broken down by heritage or population group.
- Answers to open questions are read before publication, and anything that could identify a person is removed.
- Fieldworkers are trained in this policy and agree in writing to keep answers private.
- A household that wants to record its story or share heritage knowledge is given the moderators’ contact details. Names are never written on the survey form.
Where survey answers are kept
- Fieldworkers record answers on a phone with KoboToolbox. The answers are sent to KoboToolbox’s servers, which run on Amazon Web Services outside South Africa. The Forum will use KoboToolbox’s European Union server, where European data protection law applies. POPIA allows personal information to go to a country whose laws protect it in a similar way.
- Answers are removed from the phone once they have been sent.
- Only the record keeper and the statistician who checks the survey can see the full answers.
- Anonymous answers may be shared with others, such as a university or a government department, only under a written agreement. Before they are shared, answers are grouped so that no household can be recognised.
Other services the site uses
When you open a page, your browser also connects to some outside services. They receive your IP address and basic details about your browser, as happens with most websites.
- Translation. The language button uses GTranslate, which translates pages with Google Translate. If your browser is set to a language the site offers, the page may be translated automatically. When a page is translated, its text is sent to Google. GTranslate stores your language choice in a small cookie so that the next page opens in the same language.
- Fonts. The site’s fonts load from Google Fonts.
These services do not receive the private contact register or your submissions. Only the text of published pages is sent for translation.
Where it is kept
The contact register, submissions, and messages are kept on the record keeper’s own computer and phone. They are not published.
Survey answers are kept as set out in The yearly valley survey above.
The website itself is stored and served by GitHub, a company whose servers are outside South Africa. Only published entries go there.
How long we keep it
| Record | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Original submissions | 12 months after the entry is published or declined, then deleted |
| Contact register | While the entry is on the site, then 12 months after it is removed, then deleted |
| Consent records | As long as the contact channel is shown, then 12 months, then deleted |
| Right-of-reply messages | While the entry is on the site, then 12 months after it is removed, then deleted |
| Published entries | While the initiative is active. Each entry is reviewed once a year. |
| Survey answers, including heritage and population group | While the survey runs, so that years can be compared. Deleted within 12 months if the survey stops. |
| Published survey results | Kept on the site |
If we cannot reach an initiative for 12 months, its entry is marked dormant and its contact details are deleted from the register.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- tell you what information we hold about you
- correct information that is wrong or out of date
- remove your contact details from the site
- delete the information we hold about you, or remove an entry about your initiative
- stop contacting you
Because the survey records no names, we usually cannot find one household’s answers later. You can ask the fieldworker to delete your answers during the visit, before they are sent. After that, contact us within one month of the visit, with your village and the date, and we will try to find and delete them.
Send your request through the Contact page. We will reply within 14 days.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Information Regulator.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes too.