Someone on Facebook is offering you a job at Checkers, Spar or Mr Price. The post looks real. The logo is right. They tell you to message them, and when you do, they ask for R1 000 — a registration fee, they call it, to secure your place.
There is no place. There is no job. The R1 000 is the whole point.
This is the most common job scam in South Africa right now, and it works because it is aimed at exactly the people who cannot afford it. Here is how to recognise it before you pay.
Start with the one rule that settles it
You do not have to judge whether a job advert looks professional. You do not have to work out whether the person messaging you sounds legitimate. There is a much simpler test, and it is almost never wrong:
If someone asks you for money to get you a job, it is a scam. Stop there.
Not a maybe. Not “be careful”. Stop.
It does not matter what the money is called — registration, admin, training, uniform, medical, transport, a “guarantee”, a “placement fee”. It does not matter how small it is. It does not matter that they say it is refundable on your first payslip. A real employer does not charge you to hire you.
In South Africa, charging you is not just wrong — it is against the law
This is the part most people do not know, and it is worth knowing.
Under the Employment Services Act (No. 4 of 2014), which came into operation in August 2015, a work seeker may not be charged a fee for employment services. Section 15 of the Act prohibits it outright, and it also blocks the workarounds — an agency cannot get around the rule by taking the money out of your first wages instead. A private employment agency that breaks this can be fined up to R50 000 per contravention.
(There is one narrow exception written into the Act: the Minister may, by notice in the Government Gazette, allow fees for certain specified categories or specialised services. It is narrow, it is published publicly, and it has nothing to do with somebody in your Facebook inbox asking for R1 000 to put your name on a list for a till job.)
So when a stranger asks you for a registration fee, you are not dealing with an employer who is a bit unprofessional. You are dealing with someone committing a crime.
What the fake posts actually look like
These are not rare or hard to find. The fact-checking organisation Africa Check has documented them repeatedly.
In one case, a single Facebook post claiming a group of South African retailers were hiring was shared more than 5 000 times. It carried job posters for Pep, Roots Butchery, Spar, Shoprite and Mr Price, and threw in the Electoral Commission and the farming group ZZ2 for good measure. It opened with a line you have probably scrolled past yourself — “We are Hiring!! Part Time and Full Time.” — and told applicants they had to be available immediately, willing to learn, and aged between 18 and 55.
Africa Check has also traced Facebook pages that advertise vacancies which do not exist at SASSA, Mr Price and Netcare, rebranding themselves whenever they attract too much attention. And they have found entire fake job websites where the listings were copied from old, genuine adverts — with the closing dates quietly deleted or changed so that dead opportunities looked current.
That last trick is worth sitting with. A stolen advert for a job that closed two years ago will still take your R1 000 today.
Seven things that give it away
- They ask for money. Anything. At any stage. This one is enough on its own — you can stop reading the rest of the list.
- They want you in the inbox. “Send message inbox”, “WhatsApp this number”. Large retailers do not recruit through Facebook Messenger. They use their own careers portal or an official email address.
- The writing is off. Random Capitals, double exclamation marks, strange punctuation, broken grammar. A company the size of Shoprite has a marketing department and it does not write like that.
- Payment by Instant Money or eWallet. Often with an excuse attached — that they do not have a company account yet, or that the finance office is closed. Real employers do not collect money from staff by eWallet, because real employers do not collect money from staff.
- The link does not go where it says. Hover over it, or look at it properly. If a “Shoprite” advert links to something that is not shoprite.co.za, it is not from Shoprite.
- No closing date, or a suspiciously fresh one. Real vacancies close. An advert that has been live for months, or one where the date looks edited, is often a recycled advert with a new price tag.
- You are being rushed. “Only 5 spots left.” “Pay before 5pm today.” Urgency is not enthusiasm. It is a tactic, and it exists to stop you thinking.
How to check, in two minutes, for free
Do not use the link in the post. That is the entire trick. Instead:
- Open a new browser tab yourself and search for the company’s name.
- Go to their own website — the real one — and find the Careers or Vacancies page. Every major South African retailer has one.
- Look for the job there. If the vacancy is real, it will be listed on the employer’s own site. If it is not there, the advert is fake. It is that binary.
For government jobs, the same logic applies with different addresses. National and provincial vacancies are published in the DPSA vacancy circulars and on official departmental sites. SAPS posts its vacancies on saps.gov.za. If a state job is not in the official circular, treat it as fake until proven otherwise.
Two minutes. No airtime beyond the data you already spent scrolling. It is the cheapest thing you will ever do for R1 000.
If you have already paid
First: this was not your fault. These scams are not aimed at careless people. They are aimed at hopeful ones, and being hopeful about work is not a character flaw. People with degrees fall for these. People who are careful with money fall for these.
Then:
- Stop paying. There is always a second fee. If you paid the registration, they will invent the training. If you paid the training, they will invent the uniform. The moment you stop, it ends.
- Screenshot everything — the post, the profile, the chat, the number, the payment confirmation. Do it before they block you, because they will.
- Report it to your bank immediately. Instant Money and eWallet transfers are hard to reverse, but the window is measured in hours, not days. Phone them now.
- Open a case with SAPS. Take your screenshots. A case number is what makes anything else possible.
- Report it to the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS), and report the post and profile to Facebook so the next person sees a warning instead of a job.
- Tell people. Your family group. Your neighbours. The person queuing next to you. These scams survive on silence, and embarrassment is what keeps them alive.
Why we bother writing this
Job Market SA publishes vacancies for a living, so we spend our days looking at job adverts. Checking them is part of the work: every opportunity we publish links to the employer’s own official application page, and every post carries a closing date. When that date passes, the apply button disappears by itself and the page tells you the opportunity is closed.
None of that is generosity. It is the minimum. A job site that cannot tell you where a vacancy came from, or whether it is still open, is not doing the job — and in a country where scammers steal the closing dates off real adverts to make old ones look fresh, that detail is not a small one.
We are not an employer and we are not a recruitment agency. We will never ask you for money, and nobody legitimate ever will.
Keep your R1 000.
Sources
- Employment Services Act No. 4 of 2014, sections 14–15 and Schedule 3 — Department of Employment and Labour
- Africa Check — fact checks and analysis on fake South African retailer job adverts circulating on Facebook
- Department of Employment and Labour media statements on private employment agencies and work seeker fees