• Every employee is entitled to 21 consecutive days paid leave per year. This is the equivalent of three weeks time off and for the employee who works ‘a five day week,’ this leave amounts to fifteen working days. An employee who normally works six days every week, is entitled to eighteen working days leave which is also twenty one consecutive days of leave.
• The employee is entitled to take 21 days all in one go, but can choose to use the annual leave to take occasional days off work. The employer then deducts these days of occasional leave that an employee took during the year from the annual leave days.
• Annual leave must be taken within 6 months of the end of an annual leave cycle (a year’s work).
• If the employee is off work on any other kind of leave, these days do not count as part of annual leave. Another way of saying this is that annual leave cannot be taken at the same time as sick leave, family responsibility leave or maternity leave.
• If the leave period covers a public holiday, then the public holiday does not count as part of the employee’s leave and the employee should be given an extra days leave. (Paid public holidays are: 1 January New Year’s Day, 21 March Human Rights Day, Good Friday, Family Day, 27 April Freedom Day, 1 May Employees’ Day, 16 June Youth Day, 9 August National Women’s Day, 24 September Heritage Day, 16 December Day of Reconciliation, 25 December Christmas Day, 26 December Day of Goodwill.)
• Annual leave cannot be taken at the same time as the notice period.
• Leave pay is not a bonus on top of normal pay. It simply means that an employee gets a holiday every year, and gets normal pay for those days. If an employee doesn’t take leave, or all the leave, the employer will not pay out leave pay instead of leave unless specified through agreement.
• If an employee leaves a job without having taken all the leave that is due to them, the employee must be paid for the days of leave that they have not taken. This is called pro rata leave pay.

(See: Problem 2: Employee Wants to Claim Notice Pay and Leave Pay)