South Africans can take several measures to minimize the amount of spam calls and unsolicited marketing they are regularly bombarded with.
In 2021, Truecaller’s Global Spam & Scam Report found that South Africa had the 9th-highest rate of spam calls in the world. That was a massive jump from 17th place in 2020.
The popular call-screening app found that South Africans received an average of 13.2 monthly spam calls per user.
So even though there is legislation, and I’ve opted out, I still get a few calls every day. It is true, there may be some older form that still has a tick (or no tick) next to “Yes I’d love marketing calls” or “Don’t give my number to 3rdparty suppliers”, but either ways, the calls just don’t stop.
Truecaller has really worked well for me, so well, that I had to get rid of my iPhone and move back to an Android phone, as the Truecaller app is crippled on iOS due to not having dialler permissions.
So this app is really the only way as reporting to the police, and opting out, just don’t seem to work in practice. It is a nightmare in South Africa as far as managing it goes, and opting out of marketing calls.
See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/492323-how-to-stop-spam-callers.html