Maternity Leave in South Africa

It’s Mat Leave Monday! Today I am discussing maternity leave in South Africa. It’s March and spring is slowly making its way to Canada it’s not here yet, but it’s late summer in South Africa. There are harvest festivals happening at vineyards outside of Cape Town. Excuse me while I imagine myself sipping wine on a patio…

…OK, I’m back. As always when I discuss maternity leave outside of Canada, I have no first-hand knowledge. If you need more detailed information, check out the government info. In the case of South Africa the government website wasn’t actually all that good, so you might want to read this article as well.

New mothers in South Africa are entitled to 4 months’ maternity leave, which can start up to 4 weeks before the expected birth, and can end no sooner than 6 weeks after delivery. The leave may or may not be paid, which means that your employer is under no obligation to pay you while you’re gone. Moms who have paid into the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) are entitled to collect some maternity benefits. All workers (other than public servants) who work at least 24 hours a month are required to pay in. I’m not sure what’s up with the public servants, though.

New dads can claim three days family responsibility leave. I’m really not clear, however, on what sort of leave adoptive parents may receive. This page indicates that each adoptive parent may take three days family responsibility leave, just like fathers. However, elsewhere there is some discussion of ‘adoption leave‘, which can be claimed through UIF when someone leaves work to care for an adopted child under two years of age. There is no timeline given for adoption leave, though, and they say only one parent may claim it. This article also has some info on adoption leave, which it says is not explicitly covered under South African law, but may be allowed.

For each day of UIF benefits you receive, you must have worked 6 days according to this site. You can claim up to a maximum of 121 days of UIF as maternity benefits. But this article says you can claim from the fund as long as you’ve worked at least 4 months. It’s possible that you’re only claiming partial benefits, though, if you haven’t paid in enough. Again, I’m finding a real lack of clarity about South Africa.

And now for what everyone really cares about – how much do you receive through UIF? It seems to depend on how much you earn. The UIF pays between 38 and 58% of your average salary.

And now I would like to submit the following in my defense. I found two websites offering to handle your UIF claim for you. Moms Assist UIF and Little Miracles UIF were both started in 2005 after moms spent months wrangling with UIF to get their maternity benefits. So it seems like I am not the only one who is confused here, and in need of assistance. Which helps me to feel just a little bit better, since I feel far less confident about South Africa than any other country I’ve covered.

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