When the Department of Employment and Labour’s inspections team swept through workplaces in the Overberg region in February 2026, they conducted 99 inspections across Finance, Hospitality, Iron & Steel, Wholesale & Retail and Manufacturing. What they found should concern every South African employer: 73% of workplaces were non-compliant with the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
That is not a rounding error. Three in four businesses inspected — across multiple industries, in a functioning commercial area — could not meet the basic requirements of South Africa’s primary workplace safety law.
The Overberg inspection was one deployment of the Department’s “Taking Services to the People” campaign, which runs throughout the year across all nine provinces. The inspection teams that visited Hermanus, Gansbaai, and Stanford are the same teams that visit Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town. The 73% figure is not a regional anomaly. It is a national pattern.
What the Occupational Health and Safety Act requires
The Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) of 1993 — and its subordinate regulations — places a duty on every employer to provide a working environment that is safe and without risk to the health of employees. This is not a large-company obligation. It applies to every employer in South Africa, regardless of size, sector, or headcount.
The Act is enforced by designated inspectors from the Department of Employment and Labour. When an inspector arrives at your premises, they are not there to give advice. They are there to check compliance. If they find a contravention, they issue a written notice requiring remediation within a specified timeframe. If that notice is not complied with, the matter escalates to prosecution.
What the inspectors found in Overberg illustrates exactly what they look for on any inspection visit, anywhere in the country.
What inspectors actually check — the full list from the 2026 inspections
The Acting Provincial Chief Inspector for the Western Cape, Fezeka Ngalo, listed the specific violations that triggered contravention notices during the Overberg inspections. This is not a hypothetical checklist — it is a direct account of what caused three in four businesses to fail.
Risk assessment documentation. Every employer must conduct a hazard identification and risk assessment for their workplace. It must be documented, reviewed regularly, and available for inspection. Many employers have never done one. Inspectors ask for it immediately.
Asbestos inventory.Buildings constructed before 1990 frequently contain asbestos in ceiling boards, roof sheeting, floor tiles, and pipe insulation. If your premises have or may have asbestos-containing materials, you are legally required to maintain an inventory and implement an asbestos management plan. This obligation surprises many SME owners who lease older premises — the duty transfers to the occupier, not only the property owner.
Trained first aiders.Every workplace must have a sufficient number of trained first aiders relative to the number of employees. “Trained” means a recognised first aid certificate, not a willingness to help. Inspectors check certificates.
Employee facilities. The OHSA and its regulations require employers to provide adequate facilities for eating, changing, and storing personal belongings where the nature of the work requires it. Open-plan offices typically satisfy this. Warehouses, kitchens, construction sites, and agricultural settings frequently do not.
Personal Protective Equipment.Employers must provide appropriate PPE for every task that carries a risk of injury or exposure — free of charge to the employee. PPE includes not only hard hats and steel-capped boots but also gloves, eye protection, hearing protection, and chemical-resistant clothing where applicable. Inspectors check that PPE is provided, maintained, and actually being used.
Electrical and gas installations. All electrical and gas installations must be installed and maintained by certified professionals, and a certificate of compliance must be in place. Many SMEs operate in premises where the electrical installation was last certified years ago or never at all. Inspectors check the certificate. If it is absent or expired, it is a contravention.
Equipment servicing records.Machinery, pressure vessels, lifting equipment, and other regulated plant must be inspected and serviced at specified intervals by a competent person. Service records must be kept. “The machine is working fine” is not compliance. A service record signed by a competent person is.
Employee training records.Employers must train employees on the hazards specific to their work and the safe work procedures in place. Training must be documented. The Overberg inspection specifically cited failure to provide training for employees whose workplace was infested with snakes — an unusual but legally valid example of the principle that training must match the actual hazards of the specific workplace.
The BCEA violations found alongside OHS failures
While OHS non-compliance dominated at 73%, the inspectors also found Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) violations in 16% of workplaces. The BCEA governs minimum employment conditions — and the violations found in Overberg are among the most common nationally.
Failure to pay the National Minimum Wage (R30.23 per hour for most employees from 1 March 2026, up from R28.79) is both a BCEA violation and, in persistent cases, a criminal offence. Failure to pay Sunday and public holiday rates — at least 1.5 times the normal rate for Sundays and double time for public holidays — is similarly a statutory breach. Failure to issue employment contracts and payslips removes the evidentiary basis an employer needs if a dispute arises and simultaneously confirms the violation in an inspector’s report.
The combination of OHS and BCEA non-compliance in the same inspection sweep is significant. Labour inspectors do not arrive with a single checklist. They check everything within their mandate simultaneously. An employer who thought their risk was only around OHS discovered during the Overberg inspections that they were also exposed on BCEA.
What a contravention notice means for your business
When an inspector issues a contravention notice, several things happen simultaneously.
You are given a remediation period — typically between 7 and 60 days depending on the nature of the contravention — to bring the workplace into compliance. If you fail to comply within that period, the inspector can issue a prohibition notice (stopping work entirely on the affected activity or in the affected area) or refer the matter for prosecution.
Under the OHSA, an employer convicted of an offence faces a fine of up to R100,000 or imprisonment of up to two years, or both. For repeat offenders, or where non-compliance directly caused injury or death, sentences are more severe.
There is also a civil liability dimension. If an employee is injured in circumstances that involved an OHS contravention — for example, a fall caused by a lack of safety equipment that inspectors had previously flagged — the employer’s exposure to civil claims increases materially. COIDA provides the primary compensation mechanism, but a lapsed Letter of Good Standing at the time of injury means the employer is personally liable for the full cost of the claim.
The operational consequences extend further. Prohibition notices on specific work activities or equipment can halt production, miss delivery deadlines, and cost more in a single day than years of compliance maintenance would have.
The industries with the highest exposure
The Overberg inspections covered Finance, Hospitality, Iron & Steel, Wholesale & Retail, and Manufacturing. All five failed at rates consistent with or above the 73% average.
Hospitality is a persistent OHS non-compliance leader nationally — consistent with the 77.8% COIDA non-compliance rate ClearComply found in its own analysis of employer data. The combination of high staff turnover, casual employment structures, and thin margins creates an environment where compliance administration is chronically deprioritised.
Manufacturing and Iron & Steel present the highest physical risk profiles — machinery, heavy lifting, heat exposure, chemical handling — alongside the most complex OHS requirements. The gap between what the law requires and what many SME manufacturers actually have in place is significant.
Wholesale and Retail, often assumed to be lower-risk, carries its own OHS obligations around manual handling, racking systems, slip and fall prevention, and facilities provision. The assumption that an office or shop floor requires minimal OHS attention is specifically what the Overberg inspectors found to be wrong.
Why the inspections are increasing
The “Taking Services to the People” campaign is not a new initiative — but its frequency and geographic reach have expanded materially since 2024. The Department of Employment and Labour has publicly signalled a shift toward more proactive enforcement across all provinces, driven in part by political pressure to demonstrate that labour legislation protects workers in practice and not only on paper.
Deputy Minister Jomo Sibiya has repeatedly called for consequences for non-compliance throughout 2026. The Overberg inspections, the September 2024 national hospitality sweep that generated R10 million in fines, and the ongoing Compensation Fund anti-fraud campaign all reflect the same enforcement trajectory: higher volume, broader geographic coverage, and a lower tolerance for unresolved contraventions.
For South African employers, the practical implication is straightforward. The question is no longer whether an inspection will happen. It is whether your business is ready when it does.
What to check before an inspector arrives
An OHS self-assessment before an inspection is not difficult — it requires methodical documentation review rather than specialist knowledge. The starting point is the list from the Overberg inspections, applied to your own premises:
Is your risk assessment documented, current, and accessible? Has every identified hazard been controlled and recorded? Do you have a valid asbestos survey or, at minimum, a confirmed absence of asbestos-containing materials? Are your first aiders trained and certificated? Are your electrical and gas installations certified? Is all equipment on a documented service schedule? Does every employee have a signed employment contract and receive a payslip?
If the answer to any of these is no, or not sure, that is where a contravention notice would land.
Where COIDA and UIF fit into this picture
An OHS inspection does not stand alone. The Department’s inspectors check UIF registration and contribution compliance in the same visit. If you have employees and are not registered for UIF or are not making contributions, that contravention is captured alongside the OHS failures.
COIDA compliance — specifically, whether your Letter of Good Standing is current — determines whether your employees have Compensation Fund cover if they are injured during the course of the inspection period. An employer who fails an OHS inspection on the same day a workplace injury occurs, while operating with a lapsed LOGS, faces simultaneous OHS prosecution, COIDA personal liability, and UIF penalties.
These obligations do not exist in isolation. They are checked simultaneously by the same inspectors using the same visit.
Check your COIDA and CIPC compliance status now
ClearComply’s free compliance check at clearcomply.co.za/check covers your COIDA Letter of Good Standing status, UIF registration, and CIPC standing in one place — the obligations most commonly cited alongside OHS findings in Department inspections. If your LOGS has lapsed or your UIF registration has a gap, the Fix-It report inside ClearComply walks you through exactly what to file and in what order.
Ongoing monitoring — automated reminders before your LOGS renewal date, UIF submission deadlines, and CIPC filing windows — is available from R49 per month. The next inspection team does not give advance notice.
For deeper detail on COIDA compliance rates across all 15 major South African industries, see COIDA Compliance in South Africa 2026: Industry-by-Industry Analysis. For the recovery sequence if your Letter of Good Standing has already expired, see Letter of Good Standing Expired? How to Recover Your COIDA Compliance.
Sources: Department of Employment and Labour media statement, 18 February 2026 — “Workplaces in Overberg fail OHS compliance test dismally.” All enforcement data and inspection findings cited directly from official government publications.