Remark On South African Competition Law

The new Competition Law is the third competition law in the South Africa, passed by the South Africa Congress in 1998 and on January 1st 1999, it came into formal effective.On one hand, fine tradition of constitutionality has brought South Africa a competition law system. The first competition law in the history of South Africa was formulated in 1955. The Maintenance and Promotion Competition Law draft up in 1979 is the second competition law in South Africa. Why those two laws were less effective is that there was no cogent competition institution.On the other hand, all governments of South Africa has encouraged manufacturing and has supported state-owned industries, in order to avoid depending on the mining industry, which caused the prevalent monopolies.A series of political and economic reforms had been pursued by the ANC (Africa National Congress) in 1994. It aimed at promoting the connection between the world market economy and the South Africa market economy, through adjusting the concentration ratio of economy, bridging the gap between the rich and the poor, and supporting the medium and small-sized enterprises. The ANC realized the importance and necessity of the competition policy and competition law and tried to formulate new competition policy and competition law as the main methods of political and economical reforms. The new Competition Law was presented to the South Africa Congress in 1998 and it was adopted.On the basis of former experience and other countries'competition laws, legislators enacted a competition law which can not only incarnate reformational spirit but connect with the whole world as well. On the whole, it is a success competition law. It is successful in substantive law system as well as procedural law system. The 1998's competition law has forbidden the limiting horizontal and vertical behaviors and the abuse of market advantages; has introduced the system of combination, declaration and evaluation; and it has set up three competition institutions of competition committee, competition tribunal and competition appeals court, which makes a comprehensive criterion to monopolies. It also achieved obvious effects in practice.The temptation of this essay is to offer an example to the legislation of our country by analyzing the content of South Africa Competition Law and hope to import South Africa Competition Law to our law circle.