Guides
No fluff and no invented statistics. Every guide here is researched against real South African sources and written for the person actually behind the counter. If it is useful to you and you never buy anything from us, that is a good outcome.
Cape Town's Metal Theft Unit closed 136 businesses between July 2025 and April 2026, made 88 arrests and issued 3 095 fines. The reason given for the closures was not that stolen goods were found. It was non-compliance and failure to register. For a dealer, that is a different and more manageable risk than it first sounds — and a more urgent one.
A checklist you can answer today by looking at something. It is not a legal audit, and ticking every box does not make anyone compliant — but it shows you the gaps that are visible from the shop floor.
Many dealers keep a paper book because they believe the law requires one. It does not. The real question is not whether you may keep the register on a computer — it is whether you can do three specific things when a police official walks in.
Every second-hand dealer in South Africa has to hold goods for seven days before they move. Almost everyone counts it wrong, and the way most people count it puts the item out the door two days early. Here is how the count actually works, where it is genuinely unsettled, and the one escape route that no longer exists.
If you take anything in on trade, buy a machine to fix and resell, or accept a customer's old unit against a new one, the Second-Hand Goods Act applies to you. Most workshops we meet have never been told that. Here is what it actually asks for, in plain language.