Know your rights
Clear, simple information about your rights at work.
THE BONAKALA PROJECT
RIGHTS. FAIRNESS. DIGNITY.
Bonakala is building an ecosystem for fair employment — connecting people with the knowledge, rights, tools and support they need to navigate working life with greater clarity and dignity.
↓ See how the whole project fits togetherRecord your work
Keep a secure record of employment & payments.
Be prepared
Collect evidence and understand your options.
Find support
Connect to trusted people and organisations.
Strengthen together
Build fairer workplaces and stronger communities.
Drive change
Build a clearer picture of employment and the systems around it.
Why Bonakala · the idea behind the project
Make working life visible, understandable and harder to lose.
Bonakala starts from a simple observation: employment can be difficult to prove, understand and navigate when the information is scattered across messages, payslips, verbal agreements, documents and memories. The project is designed to give people a clearer place to build their own record, understand what applies to them and know where to turn when they need support.
Bonakala is not meant to replace people, unions, NGOs, legal professionals or public authorities.
It is meant to help a person arrive better informed, better prepared and with a clearer record when those human systems are needed.
It is meant to help a person arrive better informed, better prepared and with a clearer record when those human systems are needed.
BONAKALA.
The name
To be seen. To become clear.
Bonakala comes from isiZulu. The verb -bonakala can mean to appear, to be visible, to be clear or evident. That idea sits at the centre of the project: work, rights, evidence and options should not disappear into uncertainty simply because they are difficult to see or understand.
01
Make the invisible visible.
Employment is more than a job title. Bonakala brings together the details, documents, payments, events and evidence that can form a person's working record.
02
Turn information into understanding.
Rights are only useful when people can understand what they mean in their own situation. Bonakala is built around clear information rather than legal language for its own sake.
03
Help people act with clarity.
When something goes wrong, the goal is not to tell someone what decision to make. It is to help them understand the situation, preserve what matters and find appropriate human support.
For workers · available now
A clearer record of working life.
Bonakala Worker gives workers one place to keep track of the working relationships that matter to them. A worker can manage multiple employments at the same time, create and update each employment separately, keep the relevant dates and details together, and build a usable record over time.
The aim is simple: make the worker's own record of working life easier to build, understand and use — especially when circumstances become unclear or difficult.
Multiple employments
Create, manage and track more than one employment independently, rather than forcing a worker's whole working life into a single record.
Documents & evidence
Keep relevant documents, records and evidence connected to the employment they belong to, so important information is easier to find when it matters.
Rights & practical guidance
Surface relevant rights information, practical next steps and support routes without turning a difficult employment situation into a search for scattered information.
The Worker experience
01 · RECORD
Build the record
Set up each employment and keep its core details, documents and history together.
02 · UNDERSTAND
See what matters
Use structured information to understand the employment situation and relevant rights.
03 · PREPARE
Keep evidence ready
Organise records before a problem becomes urgent, rather than trying to reconstruct events afterwards.
04 · CONNECT
Find human support
Move from information to appropriate organisations, services or people when support is needed.
Open Bonakala Worker →
Free. Nothing leaves your phone.
The next layer of Bonakala · future
Built to grow beyond the Worker side.
Employer workspace
The employer side is planned for the future. It will extend Bonakala into a broader employment ecosystem while the Worker experience remains the foundation. It is not presented as available today.
FUTURE · PLANNED
Employer tools
A future workspace for managing employment relationships and responsibilities in a clearer, more structured way.
Better visibility
Over time, Bonakala can help make employment processes easier to understand on both sides of the relationship.
A wider system
The long-term vision is not two disconnected products, but a more coherent employment ecosystem built around fairness and clarity.
Help & Resources
Information should lead somewhere useful.
Bonakala is designed around the idea that information is only useful when a person can act on it. The Worker experience therefore connects rights information and practical guidance with routes to real-world support.
The project is intended to make trusted support easier to discover — while clearly distinguishing between information, guidance and human assistance.
Official information
Relevant government and public-service information can be brought closer to the employment record, so workers do not have to start from zero when looking for authoritative guidance.
NGOs & community organisations
Bonakala can point people towards organisations that provide practical assistance, worker support and community-based services.
Legal & workplace support
Where a situation calls for specialised help, the goal is to make relevant legal, labour and worker-support pathways easier to identify.
From information to action
The important step is not simply knowing that a right exists, but understanding what can be done next and where appropriate human support can be found.
Principles
Rights. Fairness. Dignity.
Bonakala is built around clarity, agency, evidence, privacy, accessibility and connection to real human support.
ClarityEmployment information should be understandable, structured and usable — not hidden behind complexity.
AgencyWorkers should be able to build and manage their own record of working life and understand their options.
EvidenceImportant events are easier to deal with when relevant records and documents have been kept over time.
PrivacyEmployment information is personal. Bonakala is designed with control and responsible handling of that information in mind.
AccessibilityUseful rights information should be approachable for people with different levels of knowledge, time and confidence.
Human supportA digital tool should help people reach the right human help when information alone is not enough.