The ECT Act, in plain language.

The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 - the ECT Act - is the statute that gives electronic records and signatures legal standing in South Africa. It was written to stop a contract being thrown out for the sole reason that it existed as a data message rather than on paper.

It is the reason a signed PDF is a contract here, and it has been in force for over two decades. Signing electronically is not a new or untested arrangement in South African law.

The Act defines an electronic signature as data attached to, incorporated in, or logically associated with other data, and which is intended by the user to serve as a signature. That is a deliberately wide definition: it is about intention and association, not about how the mark looks.

Where a law requires a signature and does not say how it must be made, an ordinary electronic signature satisfies the requirement. That covers the overwhelming majority of commercial paperwork: service agreements, NDAs, employment contracts, leases, engagement letters, mandates, consent forms and purchase orders.

An advanced electronic signature is a narrower thing: one accredited under section 37 of the Act by the South African Accreditation Authority. Only a small number of providers hold that accreditation.

A handful of specific statutes require an advanced electronic signature by name. Unless one of them applies to the document in front of you, you do not need one - and being told you do, by somebody selling you one, is worth checking.

Schedule 2 of the Act lists what cannot be done electronically. The exclusion most businesses meet is the alienation of immovable property: an agreement for the sale or transfer of land, including sectional title, still needs a handwritten signature, as does a mortgage bond.

Wills and codicils are excluded, and so are certain bills of exchange. Long-term leases of land have their own registration requirements. Everything outside that list is fair game.

The Act tells you a signature is legally recognised. It does not, on its own, prove that a particular person made a particular mark on a particular day - and that is what actually gets argued about.

What answers that is the record around the signature: which email address opened the document, from which IP address and device, at what UTC time, in what order relative to the other signers, and whether the file has changed since. A platform that keeps that record produces evidence; one that only stamps an image produces a picture.