more than two Years after South African industry groups began pushing for right-to-repair rules in consumer electronics – the EU has adopted a binding directive and six US states have enacted their own laws – Pretoria has yet to act.
“The right to repair movement is not that big yet in South Africa. I know it's huge in the UK, the US is huge too,” said Shaun Potgieter, founder of Johannesburg-based Boksburg. console service center. “I've never seen anything here. There's no real movement on it.”
Potgieter's workshop specializes in PlayStation and Xbox repairs. He and his team have completed repairs on over a thousand consoles in the last 12 months. Forty-three percent were Sony's PlayStation 5 and most of them came with the same flaw: a failed HDMI integrated circuit on the motherboard.
Most international gaming console manufacturers do not have local repair capabilities on the ground. The repair route open to most South Africans is a refurbished swap, which often means they lose data on their original machines, including game progress and rewards such as trophies.
Although cheaper than getting a new machine, a refurbished swap through official channels costs around R6 500. Repairs are very inexpensive, usually falling at the lower end of the R700 to R3 000 range. According to Potgieter, console service centers have been forced to scrap many machines simply because it was impossible to obtain the part needed for a repair. A new console costs around R12 000.
bridging the gap
In the absence of a local manufacturer presence, Right to Repair laws would bridge the gap for local consumers by empowering repair shops such as console service centers with the knowledge, tools, and parts to diagnose console errors and implement appropriate fixes. It covers diagnostic machines, how to interpret the fault codes they give, and schematic diagrams that help understand the various circuits on a motherboard.
“In the new PS5s, they changed the HDMI port on the motherboard to an HDMI IC chip and now we can't get the chip. And if you can get it, our importers charge us R3 500 for that chip… Without repair rights, it becomes very difficult to get parts. And where you do, it becomes very expensive,” Potgieter said.
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TechCentral was not immediately able to get comment from Microsoft or Sony on the matter. But by Potgieter's own admission, some of the factors driving manufacturers toward less modular designs arise from positive intentions.
Integrated hardware components reduce the distance electrons have to travel when performing calculations, leading to better efficiency and lower power demands. The need to limit piracy is also a strong driver toward closed, non-modular hardware design.
“I can understand why they're not giving out too much (information) because they're afraid people will take advantage of it and put a chip in the machine so they can play games for free,” Potgieter said.
Despite the lack of progress on electronic goods, the concept of the right to repair is not without precedent in South Africa. At the urging of the local chapter of the Right to Repair campaign, the Competition Commission implemented guidelines in July 2021 that sought to open up the vehicle after-market value chain, giving consumers more choice about where to get their vehicles repaired. No equivalent framework exists for consumer electronics.
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While Pretoria stands still, much of the rest of the world has moved. The EU's Right to Repair Directive – formally Directive (EU) 2024/1799 – was adopted on 13 June 2024, with member states required to transpose it into national law by 31 July 2026. Six US states have enacted comprehensive consumer-electronics repair rights laws: New York (effective July 2023), Minnesota (July 2024), California (July 2024), Oregon (January 2025), Colorado (January 2026) and Washington, where the law was signed into law in May 2025.
nix, nada
No South African department or regulator has matched this:
- The Competition Commission, which ran the 2021 automotive procedure, has not opened a counterpart investigation for consumer electronics.
- There is no consumer electronics repair process in the 2025/2026 annual performance plan of the Department for Trade, Industry and Competition.
- The Department of Communications and Digital Technology has made no public commitment.
- The National Consumer Commission, which administers the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), has not indicated any steps beyond the existing CPA framework – a framework that gives consumers a six-month implied warranty under sections 20 and 56 but imposes no obligation on manufacturers to provide spare parts, schematics, diagnostic tools or repair documentation to independent repairers.
According to Console Service Center, the result is a market in which manufacturers face no regulatory pressure to share schematics, diagnostic software, error-code databases or available spare parts with independent ones – even as new device prices rise and household budgets tighten.
AI tools have helped some people in the field of diagnosis. Potgieter said they have created an AI-powered tool that helps diagnose faults on the console's motherboard and interpret fault codes. He is also part of a global group of fellow repairmen who share their knowledge with each other to make fault finding easier. But these solutions are second best after direct manufacturer support.
“I think the thing that will help a lot is the parts. The second is the software that they use; they can actually see the error codes and know exactly what the problem is. It also allows you to put the console in system mode where it shows you everything that's wrong with it,” Potgieter said. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media