Having reviewed several pieces of strategy documents, policy papers, and literature, we concluded that there is no uniform definition of either institutional autonomy or academic freedom (AF). Many different points of view determine the interpretation of these terms. Furthermore, the policymakers (e.g., governments, legislators) can ignore the theories connecting to autonomy and AF and separate from them the legislation-level realization. This paper aims to overview different interpretations of autonomy and AF, highlighting the most important standpoints and presenting how autonomy and AF are realized in the national legislation. Considering the limited length of this paper, we focus on our respective countries, namely Hungary and South Africa. Our previous findings show that in many aspects, our countries face similar challenges despite the different historical antecedents. In previous research we compared the factors, which can influence research activities, however, we did not investigate the legislative framework. To that end, in this paper, we go further and look specifically at legal frameworks within our respective countries. Our results illustrate that without a homogenous content, the State may use the concepts of autonomy and AF in its legislation as it sees fit. This in turn may lead to autonomy and AF or some of their components, while being formally safeguarded, they may lose the guarantee character that corresponds to their actual content. [For the complete Volume 20 proceedings, see ED622631.]