South African SANS 164 – Southern Africa

All our products are backed by our renowned friendly and efficient customer service: answering technical questions, replying promptly, supplying quality certification, giving free advice, and delivering quickly.

These are all value-added services to make the designing, purchasing and exporting processes as quick and simple as possible. Morvan Trading is your single source for mains power plugs, sockets, connectors and cables for South Africa and the rest of the world. For these we use the quality Longwell LP-39 on smaller cables, and LP-39M on larger ones.

Contact our friendly technical team for more information call us on 01264 353489 or click here to contact us

Exporting South African plugs and sockets to Cape Town, Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, or Durban?

The ‘old’ SANS 164-1 type M plugs and 164-3 type D plugs and sockets are used in the Rebublic of South Africa, plus the landlocked but separate countries of the Kingdom of Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) and the Kingdom of Eswatini (previously Swaziland). It is also one of the plug types used in the RSA’s northern neighbours: Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique.

The ‘new’ ZA plug is currently only used in South Africa.

Contact our friendly technical team for more information call us on 01264 353489 or click here to contact us

Whilst not mandatory for South Africa, it is possible to have partially insulated live and neutral pins as an added safety feature, an industry standard created by Morvan Trading in the mid-1990s. Our quality department is ahead of regulatory requirements, meaning confidence and peace of mind from our customers.

Like its larger 16A brother, SANS 164-3 is a three-pin 6A round pin plug based on the old 5A BS546 standard, near-identical to the Indian plug. It is in the process of being phased out since the 1980s and will need an adaptor to fit the normal 16A sockets. They are still occasionally used in lighting; an unearthed 2-pin version exists, but was removed from the standard in 2003.

SANS 164-4 is based upon SANS 164-1, but is a ‘dedicated system’ used in specialist applications including UPS, clean earth, data and electronic settings. The normally round earth pin has a flat section to differentiate it from the normal type.

The SANS 164-2 plug was introduced by SANS in 2014 to become the new preferred type in South Africa. It is a 3-pin 16A plug identical to the IEC 60906-1 and much smaller than the current SANS164-1.

The changeover in ZA is to be natural, rather than enforced, with both types used in conjunction; it is foreseen to take several decades before becoming fully established. The 2-pin unearthed versions are SANS 164-5 for 2.5A and SANS 164-6 for 16A. We currently only offer the SANS164-2 as a special production item: contact us for information and pricing.

Se our technical page for the full overview of the standard, including silhouettes.

Contact our friendly technical team for more information call us on 01264 353489 or click here to contact us

Designing products for export to Cape Town, Johannesburg or Bloemfontein? The Rainbow Republic uses a large round pin plug rated at 16 Amps.

It is a development of the old English 15A BS546 plugs and sockets, which was up-rated to 16A upon the introduction of the SANS 164 standard by the Pretoria government in 1994. More information can also be found in the superseded standard SANS 60799. The IEC designation is Type M.

The relevant standard is SANS, South African National Standard, and approval is by SABS, the South African Bureau of Standards. Other test houses may also test and approve SANS 164. Approved products may be marked ‘SANS’, SANS164-X’ (where X: plug type) or ‘SABS’.

Contact our friendly technical team for more information call us on 01264 353489 or click here to contact us