{"id":791967,"date":"2024-09-23T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=791967"},"modified":"2024-09-20T18:04:09","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T16:04:09","slug":"bad-news-for-public-holidays-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/791967\/bad-news-for-public-holidays-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad news for public holidays in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africans will get one fewer public holiday in 2025 – with the only consolation being that the remaining holidays will deliver more out of season long weekends than in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa had 14 public holidays in 2024, with two ‘extra’ days coming from the 2024 national election on 29 May, and an observation day for Youth Day, which fell on a Sunday (16 June) this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Public Holidays Act (Act No 36 of 1994) determines that whenever any public holiday falls on a Sunday, the Monday following it will also be a public holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typically, this results in one or more ‘extra’ public holidays in a year, where workers can earn more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, while there is one ‘extra’ public holiday in the offing for observing Freedom Day (27 April and 28 April), this is counter-acted by one of the other public holidays next year falling on a Saturday (Women’s Day, 9 August).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public holidays that fall on a Saturday do not get the observation day as with Sunday holidays\u2014meaning South Africans will have one fewer day off (two if you count the fact there will be no bonus like election day).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that South Africa will, in effect, have the flat 12 days of public holidays next year – no freebies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Date<\/th>Day<\/th>Holiday<\/th><\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
1 January<\/td>Wednesday<\/td>New Year\u2019s Day<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
21 March <\/td>Friday<\/td>Human Rights Day<\/td>Long weekend<\/td><\/tr>
18 April<\/td>Friday<\/td>Good Friday<\/td>Long weekend<\/td><\/tr>
21 April<\/td>Monday<\/td>Family Day<\/td>Long weekend<\/td><\/tr>
27 April<\/td>Sunday<\/td>Freedom Day<\/td>Long weekend<\/td><\/tr>
28 April<\/mark><\/em><\/strong><\/td>Monday<\/mark><\/em><\/strong><\/td>Public holiday Freedom Day observed<\/mark><\/em><\/strong><\/td>+1 <\/mark><\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
1 May<\/td>Thursday<\/td>Workers’ Day<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
16 June<\/td>Monday<\/td>Youth Day<\/td>Long weekend<\/td><\/tr>
9 August<\/mark><\/td>Saturday<\/mark><\/td>National Women\u2019s Day<\/mark><\/td>-1 <\/mark><\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
24 September<\/td>Wednesday<\/td>Heritage Day<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
16 December<\/td>Tuesday<\/td>Day of Reconciliation<\/td><\/td><\/tr>
25 December<\/td>Thursday<\/td>Christmas Day<\/td>Long weekend<\/td><\/tr>
26 December<\/td>Friday<\/td>Day of Goodwill<\/td>Long weekend<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

One consolation, perhaps, is that the public holidays we do get will be slightly less disruptive, economically speaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the remaining public holidays, seven fall on a Friday or Monday, or otherwise link together to form long weekends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that the country will have five long weekends throughout the year. While 2024 also has five long weekends, the final one is in December, when many businesses have already closed for the Festive Season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There had previously been a proposal<\/strong><\/a> for all public holidays in the country to be observed either on a Monday or Friday, as this proves to be far less disruptive to business operations (and thus more beneficial for the economy).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The school calendar already plans its terms around public holidays<\/strong><\/a> to reduce disruptions as far as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the timing of public holidays in 2025, South Africa will only have two truly ‘disruptive’ breaks\u2014on 1 May (Worker’s day), which lands on Tuesday, and 24 September (Heritage Day), which lands in the middle of the week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Day of Reconciliation (16 December) also falls on a Tuesday in 2025, but as above, this is less disruptive as it is in the middle of the month, in the peak Festive Season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Important for business<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While most white-collar workers in South Africa are not too fussed about which days are off days and whether or not holidays fall over weekends, the timing and allocation of public holidays has serious implications for businesses and workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any business that employs workers under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) or who otherwise qualify for benefits under the Act needs to ensure that workers are fairly compensated for the time they work these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If an employee works on a public holiday \u2013 including any additional public holiday that is declared \u2013 their employer must consider the provisions of the BCEA when determining the amount to pay them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In particular, an employer must consider whether the public holiday falls on a day on which the employee would ordinarily work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the public holiday falls on a day on which the employee would ordinarily work, and the employee works on that public holiday, then the employee is entitled to double their ordinary wage for the day \u2013 or, if greater, the employee\u2019s ordinary wage for the day \u201cplus the amount earned by the employee for the time worked on that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, if the employee does not work on the public holiday, which falls on a day the employee would ordinarily work, the employee is entitled to their ordinary wage for the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Read: Petrol price joy coming for South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heritage Day falls on a Tuesday this year, which could potentially be quite disruptive for business operations – and 2025 has a bitter pill in store for South Africans in general.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":780998,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-791967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":791969,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791967\/revisions\/791969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}