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Can the South African government track someone’s phone during lockdown?

Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, minister of communications and digital technologies, told a media briefing on 2 April that the lockdown regulations allowed the government to obtain the location information for a cellphone number if the owner had tested positive for Covid-19. The minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, said this would also apply to the people who might have been exposed to the virus through contact with that person.

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