True story. Last Tuesday, I sat across a table from three trustees of a 60-unit sectional title scheme in the Southern Suburbs. Good people. Professional. A retired accountant, a marketing executive, and an engineer. Combined property ownership in the scheme: over R12 million.
I asked them three questions.
Have you reviewed your management and conduct rules against the new CSOS Practice Directive? Blank stares.
When was the last time your governance documentation was quality-assured and lodged with CSOS? One of them thought it was done “when the building was registered.” That was 2009.
Are you aware that non-compliance with your governance obligations can result in personal fines and imprisonment of up to ten years? The engineer put his coffee down.
This isn’t an isolated case. This is the norm.
The Gap Nobody Talks About
South Africa has built an increasingly sophisticated regulatory framework for community schemes. The Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act. The CSOS Act. The Practice Directive. Court precedents that are tightening the interpretation of trustee duty of care with every judgment.
On paper, it’s comprehensive. In practice, it barely touches the ground.
The gap between what CSOS requires and what actually happens in buildings across this country is not a crack. It’s a canyon. And the people standing on the wrong side of it are mostly volunteers who said yes to serving on a board because nobody else would.
Where the System Fails
The failure isn’t in the legislation. The legislation is sound. The failure is in the transmission mechanism, the chain of communication between regulator and scheme that’s supposed to ensure compliance actually happens.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work: CSOS publishes requirements. Managing agents brief trustees on what’s changed. Trustees ensure compliance. Owners hold trustees accountable.
Here’s how it actually works: CSOS publishes requirements. Managing agents don’t read them, or read them and don’t prioritise briefing trustees because it creates work and potential liability conversations they’d rather avoid. Trustees remain unaware. Owners remain uninformed. The building operates on autopilot until a dispute forces everyone to discover the gaps simultaneously.
The July 2025 Practice Directive is a perfect case study. It consolidated all previous governance guidance into a single binding document. It raised the bar on fine schedules, discriminatory rules, internal dispute processes, and trustee accountability. It gave CSOS investigators a clear checklist for compliance site visits.
Nine months later, I estimate that fewer than 20% of community schemes in South Africa have reviewed their documentation against it. The remaining 80% either don’t know it exists or are relying on their managing agent to handle it, which, for reasons I’ve explained, isn’t happening.
Personal Liability Is Not Theoretical
Let me be direct about this because it matters.
Under Section 34 of the CSOS Act, a scheme that fails to comply with governance requirements faces enforcement action. For first-time offences, trustees can face imprisonment of up to five years. For repeat offences, up to ten years. The fines are proportionate to the severity of the non-compliance.
Recent High Court judgments have reinforced that trustees are held to a standard of reasonable care and competence. Not perfection, but not ignorance either. A trustee who says “I didn’t know the rules had changed” is no longer protected by that defence. The standard is what a reasonable person in that position should have known, not what they actually knew.
This means that a trustee who hasn’t reviewed the scheme’s governance documentation, hasn’t ensured CSOS compliance, and hasn’t sought professional guidance where the complexity exceeds their expertise is personally exposed. They may have signed up as volunteers. The law treats them as fiduciaries.
The Uncomfortable Conversation About Competence
I want to be careful here because I have enormous respect for people who serve on body corporate boards. It’s thankless work. It’s unpaid. It attracts criticism from every direction. Most trustees do their best with limited time, limited resources, and limited support.
But good intentions don’t reduce legal exposure. And the reality is that many trustees are making decisions that require legal, financial, and construction expertise they simply don’t have. Not because they’re not smart, but because they’re not specialists.
When a board decides on a R2 million waterproofing contract, they’re making a construction decision. When they approve a budget with a reserve fund contribution, they’re making a financial planning decision. When they enforce a conduct rule or impose a fine, they’re making a quasi-legal decision. When they appoint or renew a managing agent contract, they’re making a procurement decision.
Each of these decisions carries personal liability if it’s made negligently. And the definition of negligence, as the courts are making clear, is whether the trustee took reasonable steps to inform themselves, including seeking independent advice where the matter exceeded their competence.
The message isn’t that trustees should be scared. It’s that they should be supported.
Closing the Gap
The solution to the regulation-reality gap isn’t more regulation. We have enough legislation. What we need is better transmission. Better mechanisms for ensuring that regulatory requirements translate into actual compliance on the ground.
Three practical interventions would make a measurable difference.
Independent governance health checks, conducted by specialists who understand both the legal framework and the operational reality of buildings. Not a 200-page compliance report that nobody reads, but a focused assessment that identifies the three to five highest-risk gaps and provides a practical remediation plan. Every scheme should have this done within 12 months of the Practice Directive, and every three years thereafter.
Managing agent accountability for compliance communication. If an agent is being paid to manage a scheme, part of that mandate should include proactive compliance updates. When a new Practice Directive is published, the agent should brief the trustees within 30 days, identify the gaps in current documentation, and present a remediation timeline. This should be a contractual obligation, not a nice-to-have.
Trustee education that goes beyond the theoretical. CSOS offers training, but it needs to be more practical, more frequent, and more accessible. New trustees should complete a basic governance induction within 60 days of appointment. It doesn’t need to be a law degree. It needs to cover the five things most likely to get them into trouble and the five things they should never do without independent advice.
The Bottom Line
The regulatory framework for community schemes in South Africa is more robust than it’s ever been. The enforcement appetite is increasing. The courts are raising the bar on trustee accountability. And most buildings are operating with governance documentation that was written before any of this happened.
If you’re a trustee reading this, the question isn’t whether your scheme has gaps. It almost certainly does. The question is whether you’re going to address them proactively or wait until a dispute, an insurance claim, or a CSOS investigation forces you to discover them under pressure.
One of those options is good governance. The other is a R50 dispute application away from becoming a personal liability matter.
