Five things to check before hiring a domestic worker in South Africa

A reference is a story told by someone with an interest in the outcome. A background check is a record. Most households we talk to have only ever asked for the first — and the gap between the two is where almost every avoidable mistake lives.

An ID copy in a WhatsApp message is not identity verification. It is a photograph of a piece of plastic, often a photograph of a photograph, and at no point in that chain has anyone proved that the document and the person in front of you belong to the same human being.

The Department of Home Affairs runs a public verification service for exactly this reason. A verified worker on Hustla has been matched against that service, and the result is attested in their own name. If you are hiring outside the platform, you can do the same — though it requires a registered business account with the DHA ↗ and a paid query.

The simplest version of the check, in person:

1. Hold the green ID book or smart card alongside the person.
2. Compare the ID number on the document to the one they tell you out loud.
3. Compare the photograph to the face in front of you.
4. Photograph the ID, with the person's written consent, for your records.

If the document and the person cannot be tied together by a record outside of either of them, you are not verifying. You are taking a polite gamble.

Anything short of this is a story, not a check.

South African citizenship is one path. There are five others — general work, critical skills, intra-company transfer, asylum-seeker permit, and the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit (ZEP). Each has its own validity window, its own conditions, and its own renewal path.

What to ask for, in order

1. A South African ID, or a passport plus a valid permit.
2. The permit's endorsement page — the one with the conditions printed on it, not just the photograph page.
3. A check of the expiry date against today's date. If it expires inside six months, plan for renewal now.
4. Confirmation, in writing, of which permit class the worker holds.

Hiring an undocumented worker is not a paperwork mistake. Under section 38 of the Immigration Act, the employer carries the liability — and the fine is structured to scale with the household income. We have written a longer piece on this in Your liability as an employer; it is worth ten minutes of your time before you make any decision in this part of the process.

A real background check is three records: the criminal-record certificate from the South African Police Service (SAPS), a credit footprint from a registered bureau, and — for any role with vehicles or financial responsibility — a driver's licence verification. None of these is private information once you have written consent, and consent is the only legitimate basis on which to ask.

A reasonable timeline for a full check is five working days. Anything offered as instant is, in our experience, not actually a check — it is a database lookup against a list of names, which is roughly as reliable as a Google search.

If you are technical, the Hustla API issues attestations against the same five-point process, in machine-readable form:

curl https://api.hustla.co.za/v1/verify \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${HUSTLA_TOKEN}" \
  -d '{"id_number": "REDACTED", "scope": "full"}'

The response is a signed JSON document linking the ID number to a verification ID, a checksum of the underlying records, and a revocation URL. Employers without an API integration receive the same attestation as a one-page PDF, downloadable from the worker's profile.

The check itself costs us money to run, every time, against three different government and private databases. We pass that cost through at roughly R250 per worker. Anyone offering a meaningful check for less is either subsidising it from somewhere, or skipping a record.

One reference is a friend. Two references is a pattern. Three references is what professional recruiters do, and it is not because they enjoy phone calls.

Three questions worth asking

1. "What was the reason for leaving?" — the answer tells you the temperature of the parting.
2. "Would you re-hire?" — a hesitation here is more honest than any sentence that follows.
3. "What would you tell yourself if you were hiring them again?" — invites a small admission, and small admissions are usually the useful ones.

A reference that is delivered as a glowing one-paragraph WhatsApp is not a reference. It is a courtesy. The references that matter are the ones where you can hear a person thinking about their answer in real time.

A reference is a story told by someone with an interest in the outcome. Ask the same person two slightly different questions and you will hear the seams.

If you cannot get a phone call, at minimum get a written reference with the previous employer's name, role, dates of employment and a working phone number. A reference without a phone number is a piece of paper.

Sectoral Determination 7 is the law that governs domestic work in South Africa. It is not optional, and it is not a guideline. It sets the minimum wage, the maximum hours, the notice periods, the leave entitlements, and the procedure for termination. A handshake does not override it.

A two-page contract is enough. The minimum it should contain:

1. The full names and ID numbers of both parties.
2. The job title, the address of work, and a brief description of duties.
3. The agreed wage, paid weekly or monthly, in writing.
4. The hours of work per week and the rest periods.
5. Leave: annual, sick, family responsibility, public holidays.
6. Notice period for either party.
7. Signature of both parties, dated, with one copy each.

We publish a free template at hustla.co.za/contracts ↗ that meets the minimum requirements of Sectoral Determination 7. Fill it in, sign two copies, give one to your worker. The single most reliable predictor of a calm working relationship is a contract both parties have read.

Everything above is administrative. The work itself is not. You are inviting someone into the most private space you have, and asking them to care about it the way you do. Verification is the floor — the rest is on you.

The households we talk to who do this well are not the ones with the cleanest paperwork. They are the ones who treated the paperwork as a starting point, who paid above the minimum, who asked the worker what they wanted to be called, who let them eat at the same table.

The household that gets this right is not the one with the cleanest paperwork. It is the one that treated the paperwork as a starting point.

Five checks, in the order above. Then the harder work begins — the same work that any decent working relationship asks of either party. Verification clears the floor. What you build on top of it is yours.