There are twelve public holidays in a South African year and three ways one can play out for an employee. Each has a different answer, and the one people get wrong is the first, because it looks like the day where nothing happens.
The rule that surprises people first
A public holiday they would normally have worked is paid, even though they did not work.
They do not lose a day's pay because a holiday landed on a Tuesday. For a monthly-paid employee this is invisible: their salary is the same and nobody thinks about it. For anyone paid by the day or the hour it is very visible, and it is where money quietly goes missing, because the intuitive thing is to pay for days worked.
So: normal day's pay, no work done. That is the default, and it is most of the public holidays in most years.
The three situations
1. They do not work, on a day they would normally work
Pay their normal day's wage. Nothing else changes.
2. They work, on a day they would normally work
At least double their daily wage. For domestic workers this is clause 18(2)(b) of Sectoral Determination 7; the Basic Conditions of Employment Act sets the same standard for other employees.
The word is at least. You can agree better, never worse.
3. They work, on a day they would not normally work
Their daily wage plus their hourly wage for every hour worked (SD7 clause 18(3)).
This one reads oddly until you see what it is doing: they get the day they would have had, plus payment for the hours they actually gave up. A short shift on a day off is not cheap, and that is deliberate.
And if a public holiday falls on a day they would not normally work and they do not work it, nothing is owed. A Monday-to-Friday employee is not owed anything for a holiday that falls on a Sunday.
Working it out in rands
You need their daily wage and their hourly wage. There is one correct way to get them from a monthly salary, section 35(4) of the BCEA:
- Weekly = monthly divided by 4.333
- Daily = weekly divided by the days they work in a week
- Hourly = weekly divided by the hours they work in a week
Take R6,500 a month, five days a week, nine hours a day (45 hours):
- R6,500 divided by 4.333 = R1,500.12 a week
- R1,500.12 divided by 5 = R300.02 a day
- R1,500.12 divided by 45 = R33.34 an hour
Now the three situations:
- Off, normal working day: R300.02. Already in their salary.
- Works their normal day: at least R600.04 for the day. If they are monthly paid, R300.02 is already in the salary, so the extra you add is R300.02.
- Works a day they do not normally work, 5 hours: R300.02 for the day, plus 5 hours at R33.34 = R166.70. Total R466.72.
Note what is not in that list: overtime rates. Public holiday work has its own rate. Do not stack a holiday rate and an overtime rate on the same hours unless they have genuinely also exceeded their ordinary hours for the week, which is a separate calculation. If overtime is where your questions actually are, we have a guide on overtime pay and how it is calculated and a free overtime calculator.
They cannot be ordered to work it
Work on a public holiday happens only by agreement. There is no instruction you can give that makes it compulsory.
Agreement can be in the contract, or reached at the time. What it cannot be is assumed because it is a busy season, or because you are paying double. Double pay is the price of agreed work, not a substitute for agreeing.
In practice, ask early and take the answer. If the answer is no, the day is situation 1 and it costs you their normal day's pay.
The Sunday rule
When a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the Monday that follows becomes a public holiday too, under the Public Holidays Act.
This is genuinely easy to miss because the calendar on your wall may not show it. It moves a working Monday into public-holiday territory with all three situations above applying to it, and an employer who did not notice has usually already had the work done at ordinary rates by the time anyone checks.
The twelve holidays themselves are fixed by the Act, and the President may declare additional public holidays, which has happened for elections. A declared holiday counts the same as a listed one.
What to write down
For each public holiday, one line: did they work it, was it a day they normally works, and how many hours. That is everything the calculation needs.
It is three facts, and none of them are recoverable in December for a holiday in March. WageDesk records the day against the worker with the hours attached and prices it on the payslip using their contracted days and hours, so the daily and hourly rates come out consistent with every other line on the same document.
This article explains the law in general terms and is not legal advice.