Domestic workers fall through the cracks of South Africa’s broken UIF system

South Africa is one of the most sophisticated countries on the continent when it comes to digital finance. We file our taxes through Sars eFiling, register our companies online, move money between banks and accounts in seconds, and pay for goods with QR codes, tap-to-pay and banking apps. Yet when workers, in particular domestic staff who are among the most vulnerable workers in the country, become unemployed, they still have to jump through hoops, submit paper forms, stand in queues at Department of Labour centres, and wait months for a Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) payment that might never come.

Domestic work might be conducted in the private space, but it remains one of the most essential and undervalued forms of labour in South Africa.

Sweepsouth’s 2025 Report on Domestic Worker Pay and Working Conditions shows that domestic work comprises about 4.9% of total employment and 10.5% of women’s employment nationally. Among the surveyed workers, nearly two out of three domestic workers in South Africa are Zimbabwean nationals, though the report notes this is not necessarily representative of the wider sector.

Many domestic workers are single mothers and sole breadwinners, so when they lose their jobs, the system designed to protect them simply doesn’t work. This, despite the Unemployment Insurance Act (UIF) promising protection for anyone legally working more than 24 hours a month.

In the past year, nearly one in five domestic workers in South Africa lost their jobs, shows the report. Most of these losses were driven by household finances: around 16% said their employers could no longer afford to pay them, while another 38% lost work when employers moved – often abroad. When jobs vanish, the UIF’s supposed safety net shows just how many holes it still has, in an era when other public services have gone online and done so effectively.

Only about 12% of domestic workers who lost their jobs were registered for UIF. A big part of the reason is that employers struggle to register them and simply give up. UIF registration should be simple: sign up, declare earnings, pay your contributions. Instead, it’s a tangle of outdated forms, rejected submissions, and system problems. As one respondent told us: “My UIF application sat for months and then came back with errors.”

These frustrations are echoed elsewhere. News24 says the UIF’s 2024/25 annual report reveals it spent only 13% of its employability budget, despite record unemployment. The fund is described as being weighed down by inefficiency and financial strain, where eligible workers and employers face long delays, unanswered applications, and repeated system crashes.

And yet the UIF went digital in 2008, with the uFiling system. Theoretically, it would make compliance easier for employers. During COVID-19, the UIF relied heavily on uFiling to manage TERS (Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme) applications, which exposed major technical and data issues. The system remains unstable, still struggling with errors and outages that force people to resort to paper filing.

This cumbersome system discourages compliance from otherwise law-abiding citizens who want to do the right thing. Most employers aren’t shirking their duties out of malice; they’re just worn down by the process. We need the system to work. There’s no reason social protection should lag behind.

The UIF should be as intuitive as eFiling and as quick as an EFT. Registration must be mobile-first, built in plain language, and backed by real-time feedback. Employers should be able to link payments directly from their bank apps or payroll software.

Fixing the UIF isn’t something the Labour Department can do on its own. It will take cooperation between the government, business, and technology experts to build a system that actually works. Employers should be able to register workers and pay contributions online, using the same kind of simple, secure tools that are already in use.

Workers should be able to check, at any time, whether they’re registered and what’s been paid over.

Behind the forms and systems are real people. When domestic workers lose their jobs and find they’re not registered for UIF, their family is without income, children are missing meals and school, and rent is unpaid. Every delay in fixing the system pushes more families closer to the edge, when even for those still employed, seven in ten say they are in a financial crisis or unable to save each month.

South Africa has the tools and the talent to fix this but we must treat this with urgency. A country that can move money in seconds should be able to move protection just as fast. The UIF doesn’t need to be reinvented, it just needs to work as promised.

Lourandi Kriel is the CEO of Sweepsouth.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

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