Sick notes and the law: what SA employers can actually require

By PRACPROOF (PTY) LTD · July 2026

Few workplace documents cause as much friction as the sick note. Employees feel policed; employers feel defrauded; and both sides routinely misquote what the law actually says. The core rules live in one place — section 23 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act — and they are shorter than most people expect.

An employer is not required to pay an employee for sick leave if the employee has been absent from work for more than two consecutive days, or on more than two occasions during an eight-week period, and does not, on request, produce a medical certificate stating that the employee was unable to work for the duration of the absence on account of sickness or injury.

Two things follow from that wording. First, the trigger is the pattern or length of absence — a single one-day absence doesn't, by itself, put statutory pay at stake. Second, the remedy is specific: the employer may treat the uncertificated days as unpaid, which is different from (and comes before) any disciplinary question.

The Act requires the certificate to be issued and signed by a medical practitioner or another person who is certified to diagnose and treat patients and who is registered with a professional council established by an Act of Parliament. In practice, the reliable test is the signatory's registration — a registered doctor plainly qualifies; a letterhead alone, from anyone, does not.

The statutory requirement is that the certificate states the employee was unable to work for the duration of the absence because of sickness or injury. Beyond the statute, credible certificates identify the practitioner, the practice and its contact details, the consultation date, and the booked-off period, over the practitioner's signature. A document too vague to verify is a document an employer can reasonably query. (Professional bodies also set ethical rules about certificate contents for practitioners — if you need chapter and verse for a dispute, get a labour-law practitioner to cite the current provisions.)

The established route is to contact the issuing practice — using contact details you look up yourself, not the ones printed on a questionable note. The practice cannot discuss the diagnosis, but it can confirm whether the certificate was genuinely issued. The modern route is digital: certificates issued through PracProof carry a tamper-evident QR code that anyone can scan to confirm, in seconds, that the document is genuine and unaltered — free and without a phone call. A forged certificate, once proven, is fraud, and South African case law supports dismissal for it after a fair process.

Most sick-note conflict is avoidable with a clear written policy: when certificates are required (track the BCEA thresholds), who they must come from, that the company verifies certificates as a matter of routine, and what happens when one fails verification. Applied consistently, that policy protects honest employees as much as it protects the employer.