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
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
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
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
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
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
Philip de Witt Heat Is a Physical Agent, Not the Weather: The Duty That Lands on 6 September Most South African employers think of heat as a comfort complaint, not a legal duty. That is now the wrong way round. Since 06 September 2026 the Physical Agents Regulations 2024 have stood alone, and they name heat and cold as ph Aug 12, 2026
Philip de Witt The OHS Amendment Bill Everyone Calls New Has Been Waiting Since 2020 If you have read that a new Occupational Health and Safety Amendment Bill is open for public comment in 2026 and that you must respond, the headline is out of date. The Bill being described is the Occupational Health and Safety Am Aug 12, 2026
Philip de Witt When the City Joins the Raid: The Municipal By-law Layer Most Employers Miss The joint compliance blitz that has been sweeping South African workplaces since mid 2026 has quietly added a fourth partner: the municipality. When the City of Tshwane agreed in late July 2026 to run coordinated operations alongs Aug 1, 2026
Philip de Witt What a Blitz Inspection Actually Checks, and the Record That Survives It A blitz inspection is not a single-issue visit. When the Department of Employment and Labour arrives, often alongside Home Affairs, the police and the metro, it checks compliance across the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the Jul 29, 2026
Philip de Witt The Duty South Africa Has Not Written Down: Psychosocial Risk and Section 8 There is no South African regulation that tells an employer to manage psychosocial risk. There is also no regulation that says they may ignore it. The duty sits where most unnamed duties sit, in the general duty in section 8 of th Jul 29, 2026
The state inspected its own buildings and failed 69 percent of them. What that means for your assurance model In the first half of the 2025/26 financial year, the Department of Employment and Labour inspected 187 of its own government facilities in the Free State. Sixty nine percent were non-compliant with the OHS Act. Nearly one in six was shut down or partially suspended. Jul 23, 2026