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.
In my own words
Hi, I'm Jakobo. I'm 21, I'm not a developer by trade, and I built Bonakala anyway — because some things bother you enough that "not my job" stops being a good enough reason to look away.
What got to me was never one big, dramatic story. It was lots of small, quiet ones: someone not knowing what they were owed, someone too nervous to ask, someone just assuming that's how it goes. None of them were shocking enough to make headlines. All of them stayed with me.
Somewhere in there I landed on an idea I still believe: fairness at work is a compromise, not a fight. The person with more doesn't need to hold onto all of it, and the person with less still deserves to feel like an equal — not lucky, not grateful, just equal. I didn't invent that idea. I just couldn't let it go.
So I taught myself to build, over a lot of evenings that were meant for something else, and Bonakala is what came out of it. It's not perfect, and it's just me behind it — no team, no investors, no grand plan. But if it makes even one employment relationship a little fairer, a little kinder — that's already more than I hoped for when I started.
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.
Bonakala WorkerThe 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.
Coming soon on theApp Store
SOON
Coming soon onGoogle Play
SOON
Free. Nothing leaves your phone.
For employers · available now
Everything a fair household employer needs.
Bonakala Employer helps households employ domestic and household staff the right way — with proper contracts, accurate payslips, and full visibility into what the law actually requires. An employer can manage a whole household team in one place, generate BCEA-compliant documents in minutes, and see exactly what's outstanding and why it matters.
The aim is the same as on the Worker side, from the other direction: make doing employment properly the easiest path, not the hardest one.
Contracts & payslips
Generate a BCEA-compliant contract in minutes, then payslips with UIF worked out automatically every pay period — no spreadsheet, no guesswork.
Compliance, tracked
See the whole household team at a glance — contracts signed, pay reviews due, UIF and COIDA registration — with plain-language reasons, not just red flags.
Paired with Worker
Pair securely with your employee's own Bonakala Worker app to send contracts, payslips and letters the moment they're ready — no printing, no lost paperwork.
Bonakala EmployerThe Employer experience
01 · SET UP
Add your household team
Add each employee and generate a guided, BCEA-aware contract in minutes.
02 · PAY
Pay it right, every time
Generate a payslip each period with UIF calculated automatically.
03 · TRACK
Stay ahead of compliance
See what's outstanding across the whole household team before it becomes a problem.
04 · CONNECT
Pair with your employee
Send documents straight to your employee's own Bonakala Worker app the moment they're ready.
Coming soon on theApp Store
SOON
Coming soon onGoogle Play
SOON
Free. Everything stays on your own phone by default.
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.