Last updated: 29 September 2026
Effective date: 16 September 2026
MzansiHavn ("we", "us", "our") operates the MzansiHavn mobile application (the "App"), a dating and relationship-matching service for adults in South Africa.
Responsible party (POPIA) / Data controller:
MzansiHavn is operated by Elmo Fransman as a sole proprietor, of Cape Town, South Africa.
Information Officer (required under POPIA):
Elmo Fransman, on behalf of MzansiHavn (mzansihavnapp@gmail.com). Registered with the Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za) as of 25 August 2026.
General privacy contact: mzansihavnapp@gmail.com
Safety / child-protection contact: mzansihavnsafety@gmail.com
MzansiHavn is strictly for adults aged 18 and older. We ask for your date of birth during signup and calculate your age from it; if you enter a date showing you are under 18, you cannot continue, and we offer to delete the account immediately rather than let it sit dormant. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18, and if we become aware that we have, we will delete that account and associated data.
We collect only the personal information required by the features you use. The categories we collect are set out below.
| Data | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Email address, or phone number, or Google account identifier | Creating and securing your account (via Firebase Authentication) |
| Password (never stored by us in readable form, handled by Firebase Authentication) | Signing in |
| Date of birth | Confirming you are 18+; showing your age (not your birthdate) to other users |
| Display name, gender, gender preference | Building your profile and matching you with compatible people |
To calculate a compatibility score and explain *why* you and someone else might get along, we ask you to optionally fill in:
Every one of these fields is optional. None of them block you from using the app, and several (religion, wants-children) offer an explicit "prefer not to say" option. We use them only to compute your compatibility score and to show your matches factual answers about you, never to advertise to you based on them, and never to share them with anyone outside the app.
Special note on religion and biometric data: Under POPIA, religious belief and biometric information are both "special personal information," which the law treats more strictly than ordinary profile data and requires a specific legal basis to process. For both of these, that basis is your explicit consent. We only ever collect your religion if you choose to tell us (actively choosing "prefer not to say" is always available and changes nothing about your access to the app), and we do not use it for any purpose other than compatibility scoring and showing it on your profile to people you might match with. See §3.5 for how we handle the selfie used for photo verification and age estimation, which we treat as biometric information for the same reason and which likewise requires your explicit, separate consent before you submit it.
We collect your device's location to find people near you and show an approximate distance (e.g. "a quick drive away" rather than an exact figure). We never show your exact coordinates to another user, and we never sell or share your location data with advertisers or data brokers. If you have MzansiHavn Premium, you can browse a different South African province instead of your own area. In that case, distances shown are relative to that chosen area, not your real location.
Photos you upload are checked automatically for a genuine, detectable human face before they can appear on your profile (an on-device check when you pick the photo, and a server-side check afterward). A photo that fails this check is never shown to anyone and is deleted from our storage immediately, though the fact that one was rejected is kept on your account so you can see why. Approved photos are stored securely and shown to other users as part of your profile. Deleting a photo removes it from both our database and our file storage, and is not kept anywhere after that.
If you choose to verify your profile, we ask for a selfie. This is optional, is never required to use the app, and unlocks a "Verified" badge if approved. We use this selfie for two automated checks: comparing it against your uploaded photos to confirm they are the same person, and estimating whether it plausibly shows an adult, as a second signal alongside the birthdate you gave us at signup. Because facial age estimation has a real margin of error, we never automatically reject or ban an account from this check alone. An estimate suggesting someone may not be an adult is always routed to manual human review, never an automated decision.
We treat this selfie as biometric/special personal information: it is stored separately from your public photos, is never given a public URL, and is only ever viewable by our safety-review process. Retention: we retain verification selfies for 90 days after a review decision is made, then permanently delete them. Enforced by `verificationEvidenceCleanupSweep`, a scheduled function that runs every 24 hours.
Both of the automated checks described above (identity comparison, and age-range estimation) are performed by Amazon Rekognition, run in Amazon's EU (Ireland) region. AWS does not currently offer this specific service in its own South Africa (Cape Town) region, so submitting a verification selfie involves a one-time cross-border transfer of biometric data for that comparison. Amazon does not retain either image after the comparison completes; only the yes/no match result and the estimated age range are returned to us. See §5 for how we rely on this to meet POPIA's cross-border transfer requirements.
When you match with someone, we store the match and any messages you exchange so the conversation works, so we can detect mutual likes, and so we can act on reports (see §3.9). We also record swipes (likes/passes), notification history (e.g. "someone liked you"), and general activity timestamps so features like read receipts, streaks, and re-engagement reminders work.
Voice notes: the audio itself is deleted automatically 90 days after you send it (the message thread keeps a placeholder showing one was sent, but the recording is gone). Enforced by `voiceNoteCleanupSweep`, a scheduled function that runs every 24 hours.
We generate a random, app-specific device identifier (not your phone's hardware ID) to recognize repeat logins for fraud prevention and, if you allow notifications, a push-notification token so we can send you match, message, and activity alerts. You can turn notifications off at any time in your device settings.
If you report another user, we record the report, your reason, any details or evidence you provide, and who you are reporting. Reports are reviewed by our safety team only, and not even you can view a report after submitting it, which is a deliberate anti-retaliation design, not an oversight. If you block someone, we record that you did (so we can keep you out of each other's Discover feeds and automatically end any existing match), but the person you blocked is never told that you blocked them.
If you subscribe to MzansiHavn Premium, your payment is handled entirely by Apple's App Store or Google's Play Store (and processed via RevenueCat as our subscription-management provider). We never see or store your card details. We only receive confirmation of your subscription status (active/expired) so we can unlock Premium features.
MzansiHavn is a mobile app, not a website. There are no browser cookies here, so this section (rather than a separate "Cookie Policy") is where we disclose the mobile-app equivalent: advertising/device identifiers used by our ad partner.
MzansiHavn shows ads to free-tier users through Google AdMob, using real, revenue-generating ad units. This means AdMob processes your device's advertising identifier (IDFA on iOS, Advertising ID on Android) to show and measure ads.
Before any ad request is made, two consent mechanisms run: on iOS, Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt asks your permission before any cross-app tracking; on Android, Google's User Messaging Platform presents an equivalent consent flow before ads personalized to you are shown. You can decline either, and MzansiHavn will still show you (non-personalized) ads either way, and declining never blocks you from using the app.
We use Firebase Analytics to understand how the app is used in aggregate (for example, how many people complete onboarding, swipe, match, or make a purchase), and Firebase Crashlytics to detect and fix crashes and errors. Both are tied to your account's internal ID, never to your name, email, or phone number directly, and neither is used to build an advertising profile of you or shared with advertisers.
If you invite someone using your personal referral code, we store a link between your account and theirs (so we know who referred whom) and a count of how many people you have successfully referred. Generating a code and collecting this reward both require your account to be verified (see §3.5), which is a deliberate anti-abuse measure. We do not disclose any information about either person to the other beyond what your existing Discover/match features already would, and this link is used only to determine whether to grant the referral reward described in the app.
We do not sell your personal information, ever. We share it only with:
The list above is exhaustive as of this writing. Every third-party processor MzansiHavn's code actually integrates with is already named. If a new one is added later (e.g. a dedicated customer-support tool), it belongs here before it goes live, not after.
A practical note on what's visible to other users: treat anything you put in your bio, prompts, or photos as visible to anyone you are shown to in Discover. We deliberately keep your exact date of birth and exact location private (§3.1, §3.3), but we cannot control what you choose to type. Do not include your phone number, email address, home address, or financial details in your profile itself; share that directly with someone, if at all, once you trust them.
Our infrastructure runs on Firebase/Google Cloud Platform, split across two locations, confirmed directly against our actual project configuration (not assumed):
Under POPIA, transferring personal information outside South Africa requires either your consent, an adequate level of protection in the destination country, or a binding contract ensuring your information is protected to the same standard as under POPIA. For the Google Cloud-based processing and storage described above, we rely on Google Cloud's own data processing and security terms (published at cloud.google.com/terms/data-processing-terms). For the Amazon Rekognition transfer specifically, we rely on your explicit consent, given immediately before every verification-selfie submission (see §3.5 and the in-app consent prompt shown at that point), as well as Amazon's own data processing terms.
Under POPIA, you have the right to:
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at mzansihavnapp@gmail.com.
We use industry-standard safeguards, including encrypted connections, role-based access controls in our database rules (for example, your exact date of birth and exact location are structurally unreadable by other users, not just hidden by the interface), and restricted admin access to sensitive data like reports and verification evidence. No system is perfectly secure, and we will notify you and the Information Regulator without undue delay if we become aware of a data breach affecting your personal information, as POPIA requires.
MzansiHavn is not directed at, and must not be used by, anyone under 18. See §2. Age is checked at signup (§2) and again, automatically, from the selfie used for photo verification (§3.5). If you believe someone using MzansiHavn is under 18, please report their profile directly in the app (this reaches our safety team immediately) or contact us at mzansihavnsafety@gmail.com. See our Community Guidelines §2 for exactly what happens once we are made aware.
We may update this policy as the app changes. If we make a material change, we will let you know via the app or by email before it takes effect. The "Last updated" date at the top always reflects the current version.
This policy is written and published in English only. The App's interface is available in additional languages for convenience, but no translated version of this policy is authoritative. The English text is the sole version we rely on, and it governs in the event of any conflict, discrepancy, or translation error.
MzansiHavn (operated by Elmo Fransman, sole proprietor)
Cape Town, South Africa
mzansihavnapp@gmail.com
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact South Africa's Information Regulator: inforegulator.org.za.