Philip de Witt We Are Inspected Regularly. Most Labour Inspections Never Open the Safety File. Many South African employers are visited by labour inspectors every year and reasonably conclude that, if nothing went wrong, their compliance is in order. The Department of Employment and Labour's own figures say that conclusion Sep 30, 2026 Insights
Philip de Witt A Forklift Runs on Four Clocks. None of Them Is in Your Diary. A forklift in a South African workplace carries at least four legal clocks, and a crane carries the same four. The machine itself must be thoroughly examined and performance tested by a registered lifting machinery inspector at in Sep 28, 2026 Insights
Philip de Witt Your Safety File Counts Employees. Section 9 Counts Everyone Else. Ask a South African employer how many people its safety system covers and it will give you a headcount. Ask how many people are on its premises on a normal Tuesday and the number is usually far larger, sometimes by a factor of ten Sep 25, 2026 Insights
The Blitz Tracker: Where the Department of Employment and Labour Has Inspected, and What It Found In the Department of Employment and Labour's first coordinated national inspection blitz, inspectors visited 114 workplaces across all nine provinces and found three of them fully compliant. [1][2][3] That is the single most usefu Sep 23, 2026 Insights
Someone at Reception Says He Is a Labour Inspector. The Act Tells You Exactly What to Ask The Occupational Health and Safety Act gives every South African employer a right that almost nobody exercises. Section 28(2) requires each designated inspector to be furnished with a certificate signed by or on behalf of the Mini Sep 23, 2026 Insights
Philip de Witt The Exit Medical Nobody Books, and the Record You Must Keep for Forty Years Since 06 September 2026 the Physical Agents Regulations, 2024 and the Noise Exposure Regulations, 2024 have stood alone, and most of what they ask of an employer is a cycle with a date on it: a documented risk assessment at least Sep 18, 2026 Insights
Philip de Witt Your Letter of Good Standing Is Only as Current as the Last Return Behind It A Letter of Good Standing is not a certificate of character. It is a receipt for an assessment account that was up to date on the day it was printed, and it rests entirely on the Returns of Earnings filed behind it. On 08 Septembe Sep 15, 2026 Insights
Philip de Witt Eleven subcontractors were not on site. The principal contractor answered for all of them. On Friday 28 August 2026 the Department of Employment and Labour ran a multidisciplinary high impact blitz inspection on a construction site at Sunninghill in the City of Johannesburg. Twelve employers were operating on that site, Aug 30, 2026 Insights
Philip de Witt The Department Tells You Before It Arrives. Almost Nobody Is Listening A blitz inspection is meant to be a surprise at your gate. That is the whole point of it: an announced visit gives an employer time to tidy up, so the inspectorate arrives unannounced to see the workplace as it really is. What is Aug 25, 2026 Insights
The 73% figure is real. The national number is 35%. A result from 99 inspections in three Western Cape towns is being read as a national pattern. The Department publishes a national OHS figure, and it is less than half that. Aug 25, 2026 Insights
Philip de Witt Who May Lawfully Enter Your Business During a Blitz Inspection When a joint blitz inspection arrives, often several officials at once and without warning, the calm, correct response for an employer is not to resist and not to panic, but to establish who is entitled to enter and to co-operate Aug 17, 2026 Insights
Philip de Witt Before You Hire: What the Employment Services Amendment Bill Asks of Every Employer A Bill now moving through Parliament would change what every South African employer has to do before hiring a foreign national. The Employment Services Amendment Bill, B16-2026, would require an employer to satisfy itself, in a wa Aug 17, 2026 Insights