South Africa’s electrical and electronic goods market is awash with products that are fake, counterfeit, and don’t comply with local safety standards and other regulations.
Aside from non-compliant and illegal consumer electronics, CBI-electric engineering executive Andrew Dickson revealed last year that South Africa was seeing an influx of counterfeit electrical goods from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia.
These include knock-off circuit breakers, light switches, and other common electrical items people install in their homes.
The biggest problem really with many of these goods are, they don’t carry the necessary regulatory standards approvals. These standards are actually quite important as they relate to safety (especially fire and electrical insulation against shocks) as well as radio interference. There are countless frequencies of radio transmission in every house, and it is important that these stay within their approved frequencies and power levels, otherwise they generate noise and interference for other devices. These disturbances can often reach as far as neighbouring homes. Sometimes it is just annoying hums on speakers, but it can both block and trigger other devices nearby, like opening a garage door.
Radio communications are also sensitive to noise and these often happens on harmonics, so noise on one frequency is picked up on a number of other frequencies. It can interfere with not only your own Wi-Fi but also emergency radios etc.
This is why all radio equipment is approved for use in a country. The importer is usually responsible to ensure compliance (whether with a local standard, or with a locally accepted international standard). So if you import your own electronics, you’d want to be sure they are compliant. Apart from facing a R20,000 ICASA fine, there may also be medical or insurance liabilities if such devices cause damage to property or human life.
It’s true that many smaller devices may not have the potential to cause such problems, but certainly inverters of many types do (including electric fences), and I’ve also seen a robot vacuum cleaner causing a lot of disturbance.