Most regulatory updates are a clean before-and-after. This one isn’t. The General Safety Regulations were amended twice in 2025 — once in March, once in December — and the December notice exists largely because the March notice contained a drafting error significant enough that South Africa’s legal community flagged it publicly. If you’ve only read about the March changes, you’re working from an incomplete and, in one place, incorrect picture.

This is also the quietest of the three instruments published in the same 6 March 2025 gazette alongside the Physical Agents Regulations and the Noise Exposure Regulations — not a new regulation set, but a targeted amendment to an existing one that’s been in force since 1986.

1. What the General Safety Regulations Actually Are

The General Safety Regulations, 1986 (Government Notice R.1031, 30 May 1986, made under section 44 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993) are one of the oldest active instruments under the OHS Act — covering personal safety equipment, general workplace safety duties, and a set of numbered sub-regulations (13A onward) dealing with specific hazards like ladders and ramps.

Most of that 13-series is already gone. Regulations 13C through 13G were repealed back in 2003 — by the same gazette notice, Government Notice R.1010 of 18 July 2003, that introduced the Construction Regulations, 2003 we covered earlier in this series. That left Regulation 13B as the last regulation actually in force in that numbered sequence — until March 2025.

2. March 2025: What Notice 5954 Changed

Government Notice 5954, published in Government Gazette No. 52226 on 6 March 2025, made two substantive changes:

Regulation 2(1) — the general risk-evaluation duty. The notice rewrote the employer/machinery-user obligation to evaluate risk and take steps to make hazardous conditions safe. It’s a foundational duty — this is the general “assess and fix” obligation that sits underneath more specific regulations elsewhere in the Act.

Three new regulations: 13H, 13I, and 13J. Skipping straight from 13B to 13H, the notice introduced:

• 13H (Housekeeping) — clear floor space at machinery, orderly workplace conditions, guarding of floor openings and hatchways
• 13I (Precaution against flooding) — duties where a workplace faces a substantial flooding risk
• 13J (Fire precaution and means of egress) — emergency escape doors, fire-resistant staircases, adequate firefighting equipment

Here’s where it gets genuinely messy. Legal commentary on the notice — including from ENSafrica — pointed out that Regulations 13H, 13I, and 13J are near-verbatim duplicates of Regulations 6, 8, and 9 of the Environmental Regulations for Workplaces, 1987, the older instrument that the Physical Agents Regulations are set to fully repeal on 6 September 2026. No explanation was given for why. The unresolved legal question raised at the time: does introducing near-identical provisions into the General Safety Regulations amount to an implied repeal of the equivalent Environmental Regulations provisions, before their scheduled 2026 repeal date? ENSafrica’s own view was that it does not — but the fact that credible legal opinion had to weigh in on the question at all tells you the drafting left real ambiguity, not a hypothetical one.

There was also a plain drafting error: Regulation 2(1) as gazetted in March read “every employer and every use of machinery” — dropping the “r” from “user.” Small typo, but not one you want sitting inside operative legal text.

3. December 2025: The Follow-Up Notice

Government Notice 6907, published in Government Gazette No. 53783 on 5 December 2025, amended the General Safety Regulations a second time — nine months after the first round — and made three changes:

Fixed the typo. Regulation 2(1) now correctly reads “every employer and every user of machinery.”

Narrowed who can issue a first-aid certificate of competency — a genuine practical change. Under the pre-amendment Regulation 3, a valid certificate could come from any of: the SA Red Cross Society, St John’s Ambulance, the SA First Aid League, or an organisation approved by the Chief Inspector. The December amendment removes the first three as automatically-recognised bodies. Only an organisation approved by the Chief Inspector may now issue a valid certificate. If your workplace’s first-aid training has relied on one of the three previously-named bodies without confirming that body currently holds Chief Inspector approval, that’s worth checking directly — this is the one change in this whole post with an immediate, concrete compliance action attached to it.

Closed a penalty gap. Regulation 14 (offences and penalties) now explicitly includes Regulations 13A and 13B — governing ladders and ramps — meaning contravening those specific provisions is now clearly a punishable offence under the Act, where the position may previously have been less clear.

Worth noting separately: the same December notice also attempted to amend the Environmental Regulations for Workplaces (the 1987 instrument still technically in force until September 2026). According to ENSafrica’s analysis, that particular amendment attempt reproduced the existing wording of Regulations 6, 8, 9, and 10 verbatim — changing nothing. Whatever the intended fix was, it doesn’t appear to have landed. The implied-repeal ambiguity from March remains unresolved as of this second notice.

4. What This Means in Practice

For anyone managing first-aid certification: Confirm your certifying body currently holds Chief Inspector approval. This is the one unambiguous action item in this entire post — everything else here is more about legal clarity than immediate compliance risk, but this genuinely changes who counts as a valid issuer of a certificate your workplace may depend on.

For anyone relying on the SA Red Cross Society, St John’s Ambulance, or SA First Aid League specifically: Don’t assume automatic continued recognition. The regulation no longer names them — check current Chief Inspector approval status directly rather than relying on historical practice.

For everyone tracking housekeeping, flooding, and fire-precaution obligations: You’re currently operating in a period where two overlapping regulatory instruments — the General Safety Regulations’ new 13H–13J and the Environmental Regulations’ older 6, 8, 9 — cover substantially the same ground, and legal opinion is divided on how they interact until the September 2026 repeal takes effect. The practical answer is to comply with both, since neither has been authoritatively removed, rather than assume one has quietly superseded the other.

For everyone else: This is the messiest drafting episode across the entire March 2025 gazette trio — messy enough that it needed a second notice nine months later to partially fix it, and even that second notice didn’t fully resolve the underlying ambiguity. It’s a useful reminder that “the regulation was gazetted” and “the regulation is clear” are not the same thing, and that professional review of what a notice actually changed — versus what it was probably trying to change — has real value here.

The Bottom Line

Two rounds of amendments to the same regulation set within nine months, one of which existed specifically to fix an error in the other, is not typical. Compare this to the Draft Construction Regulations or the Noise Exposure Regulations we’ve covered earlier in this series — both are far more coherently drafted single instruments, whatever else might be said about their substance. The General Safety Regulations amendments are the outlier: a case study in why reading the gazette text yourself isn’t always enough to know what actually changed.

This is the fourth post in AOAL Consulting Services’ regulatory series on South African HSE legislation. See also our posts on the Physical Agents Regulations, 2024, becoming a Competent Person under the Physical Agents Regulations, the Noise Exposure Regulations, 2024, and the Draft Construction Regulations 2025.

Not sure whether your first-aid certifying body still holds valid Chief Inspector approval, or which housekeeping and fire-precaution provisions actually apply to your site right now? Most companies don’t know where to start with this kind of overlapping-regulation question — that’s exactly why AOAL Consulting Services is offering a free virtual gap analysis of your legal register. No cost, no obligation.

This article is for general information purposes and does not constitute legal advice.

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References

Department of Labour (1986) General Safety Regulations, 1986, Government Notice R.1031, 30 May 1986. Pretoria: Government Printer.

Department of Labour (2003) Construction Regulations, 2003 (also effecting repeal of General Safety Regulations 13C–13G), Government Notice R.1010, Government Gazette No. 25207, 18 July 2003. Pretoria: Government Printer.

Department of Employment and Labour (2025) Notice Regarding Amendment to the General Safety Regulations, Government Notice 5954, Government Gazette No. 52226, 6 March 2025. Pretoria: Government Printer.

Department of Employment and Labour (2025) Notice Regarding Amendment to the General Safety Regulations and Environmental Regulations for Workplaces, Government Notice 6907, Government Gazette No. 53783, 5 December 2025. Pretoria: Government Printer. Available at: https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202512/53783gon6907.pdf (Accessed: 1 September 2026).

Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993. Pretoria: Government Printer.

ENSafrica (2025) South Africa: Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993 (“OHASA”) – Physical Agents Regulations 2024, Noise Exposure Regulations 2024, and Amendment of the General Safety Regulations 2025. Available at: https://www.ensafrica.com/news/detail/9836/south-africa-occupational-health-and-safety-a (Accessed: 1 September 2026).

ENSafrica (2025) South Africa: Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993 (“OHASA”) – Environmental Regulations for Workplaces 1987; and General Safety Regulations 1986. Available at: https://www.ensafrica.com/news/detail/11133/south-africa-occupational-health-and-safety-a (Accessed: 1 September 2026).