Straight answers about what declareZA does, what it does not do, and how it handles your workers' information.
declareZA keeps South African employers ready for labour and immigration inspections. It holds the evidence an inspector asks for, including right to work, UIF, the Compensation Fund, minimum wage, contracts and payslips. It checks that evidence every month and produces an inspection pack on demand.
Our promise is simple: Inspection-ready. Every month.
Not yet. declareZA is in development. You can take the free self-check today and join the early-access list. Answers marked At launch describe the launch platform; answers marked Roadmap describe planned features.
South African employers who want to comply and cannot afford the disruption of a failed inspection, especially in construction, agriculture, hospitality, retail, manufacturing and security. It is also for main contractors who need evidence from the subcontractors and labour brokers on their sites, and for accountants and payroll practitioners who look after those businesses.
No. declareZA sits alongside your payroll and works from its data. Accountants can manage their clients' readiness from one portfolio view and earn a 20% recurring commission on paid clients they refer.
No. declareZA is an independent product of Didusec (Pty) Ltd. It works to publicly available legal requirements and has no government endorsement.
Recent nationwide inspections, run jointly by the Department of Employment and Labour, Home Affairs and SAPS, have checked:
No. The Bill was introduced in Parliament on 29 May 2026 and public comment closed on 6 November 2026. Its higher penalties, including a maximum fine of R100,000 per contravention and up to 10% of turnover for repeat foreign-employment contraventions, are proposed. They are not yet law.
The obligations declareZA covers are already law today: the Immigration Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the National Minimum Wage Act, the UIF Acts and COIDA. declareZA does not depend on the Bill passing.
Section 38 prohibits employing an illegal foreigner, or a foreign national whose status does not allow that particular employment. Section 38(2) requires every employer to make a good-faith effort to establish the status or citizenship of the people it employs.
If unlawful employment is proved, the employer is presumed to have known about it unless it can show good faith and that it made this effort. If an illegal foreigner is found on business premises, the person in control of the premises is presumed to have employed them, unless there is evidence to the contrary (section 38(5)).
declareZA's right-to-work register is your record of that good-faith effort.
We cannot promise that, and nobody honestly can. declareZA keeps your evidence organised, current and ready to hand over, and flags gaps before an inspector finds them. It does not certify that you are compliant, and it does not replace legal advice. Complex questions about a worker's status should go to your attorney or a registered labour consultant.
Verification stays the employer's responsibility, and declareZA supports it in two ways:
Every check is recorded with its date, method, reference, outcome and the person who did it.
No. declareZA does not itself authenticate documents, and it does not decide who may be employed. Those decisions stay with you. declareZA keeps the record of the checks you made and the documents you hold.
No. declareZA has no nationality field, filter or report. It records only the type of check each worker needs (South African ID, refugee or asylum permit, or visa) and its evidence. Every worker goes through the same process, and the platform cannot be used to sort or flag people by nationality, accent or appearance.
A consistent process also protects you: verifying people differently because of how they look or sound creates unfair-discrimination risk.
declareZA alerts you 90, 60 and 30 days before a permit expires. A renewal that has been applied for is recorded as pending, with its evidence, not as expired. Whether a worker may continue working while a renewal is pending depends on the facts, so take advice in those cases.
They can be on your site without being on your payroll. declareZA lets you request the same evidence from the labour broker or subcontractor and see, by site, what has been submitted. See main contractors.
It requests evidence from your subcontractors and labour brokers and shows you, site by site, what has been submitted and what is still outstanding. It also shows when their permits are close to expiry.
No. Statuses such as “Evidence submitted” or “Evidence requested” reflect what each subcontractor has uploaded. They are self-reported and are not an audit or a certification of the subcontractor.
No. Main contractors see the status of the evidence, not workers' identity documents, passports or permits. Each subcontractor's records stay in its own account.
The main contractor. Subcontractors and labour brokers join on the free plan. Main-contractor pricing is per site, on request.
No. Every readiness score is a self-reported indicator based on the answers and evidence in the account. It shows where to focus. It is not an audit opinion or a compliance certificate.
No. Paying UIF contributions through your EMP201 to SARS and declaring your employees to the Department of Employment and Labour on the UI-19 are separate obligations. Many employers do the first and not the second, and their workers then struggle to claim. The UIF's 2024/25 annual report calls this the “Employee Remuneration Information Gap”.
declareZA prepares the monthly UI-19 from your payroll and checks it against your EMP201. Submission is made under your own uFiling account, with declareZA acting as your authorised delegate. declareZA is not a registered labour practitioner, and does not claim to be. At launch, submission is handled with a person reviewing each one. Automated submission will be switched on only once the Department confirms the delegate model.
Encrypted, in AWS Secrets Manager in the Cape Town region. They are used only to prepare and submit your declarations.
The Department has told us it is building a system linked to SARS that generates declarations automatically. If it works as described, the manual declaration task will shrink. That is one reason declareZA covers far more than declarations. Proof of right to work, Compensation Fund standing, wages, contracts and records will still be needed when an inspector arrives, and more data matching by the state means more gaps get found.
Yes. declareZA can help you prepare and submit missed historical declarations.
Your business is the responsible party under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). Didusec processes the information on your behalf as operator, under a written operator agreement and the Didusec privacy policy. Our verification partner and our cloud provider act as further operators under written agreements.
Didusec's Information Officer can be reached at [email protected].
On Amazon Web Services in the Africa (Cape Town) region, af-south-1. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with keys managed in AWS KMS. Access is role-based and supports multi-factor authentication. Every check, upload, declaration and change is recorded in an audit log.
Never. Identity numbers, passports, visas, permits and the results of status checks are kept out of every AI feature. The AI-Assisted guidance works only from descriptions of gaps, such as “one contract missing”. It never sees workers' identity or immigration records, so that information never leaves the Cape Town region for AI processing.
Use it as practical guidance, not legal advice. It explains gaps in plain language and points to the next step. For anything with legal consequences, especially a worker's immigration status, consult your attorney or a registered labour consultant.
Only your authorised users. Each business's records are kept separate from other customers' records. Accountants see only the clients who have linked them. Main contractors see evidence status, not personal documents.
Your records are yours. You can export your full evidence history at any time, including on cancellation. After that, data is deleted or de-identified in line with the operator agreement and any retention period the law requires.
All prices include VAT. Partner ID verification is charged per check. Plan inclusions are confirmed at launch. See pricing.
Yes. Employers with 1–5 workers pay no subscription and need no card. The only charge is the per-check fee if you choose to run partner ID verification.
Accountants and payroll practitioners earn a 20% recurring commission on every paid client they refer, and get a portfolio view of each client's readiness. Full terms are confirmed at launch.
Email the declareZA team, or take the free self-check to see where you stand.