SAFLII was formally created in 2002 as a joint project between the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) and the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In 2006 the South African Constitutional Court Trust assumed ownership of the project.
The website at the time of this transition carried approximately 700 judgments from South Africa and Namibia.
SAFLII is currently in operation from within the Department of Public Law at the University of Cape Town and has been there from December 2013.
Currently, SAFLII serves over 220,000 unique visitors per month and provides access to about 49,000 judgements from South Africa alone.