Guest House Association of South Africa

30/09/2026

THE BRIEF | Wednesday 30 September

Eskom's waiver on rooftop solar registration fees ends today. If your guest house sits on an Eskom connection and your solar has never been registered, today is the last day it is free.

WHAT ESKOM SAID

From an Eskom media statement dated Thursday, 26 March 2026: "Eskom will continue waiving registration-related charges for eligible systems until 30 September 2026." The same statement says the waiver was extended "from 31 March 2026 to 30 September 2026".

Agnes Mlambo, Eskom's Acting Group Executive for Distribution, put a value on it. "The extension means that all registration and connection fees including a free smart meter (up to R10k for urban/ residential customers and R36k for rural customers), are waived until 30 September 2026 for Eskom customer solar systems up to 50kVA".

Read that as what the waiver is worth, not as a bill. Eskom has published no figure for what registration costs from 1 October, and we will not invent one.

WHERE ESKOM DISAGREES WITH ITSELF

The body of that statement says it covers "systems of up to 50kW". Mlambo's quote in the same statement says 50kVA. Those are not the same unit. IOL, on 11 September 2026, splits it and writes "up to 50kVA/kW".

Same problem on the threshold. Eskom says systems "under 100kW" must be registered. IOL says below 100kVA.

If your system is near either number, phone Eskom on 0860 037 566 and get your own answer rather than rely on ours.

WHAT YOU NEED

Eskom lists three items. "A Certificate of Compliance (CoC)". "An inverter test certificate". "A test report for the installation".

IOL names them more precisely. A valid CoC, an NRS097-2-1 inverter type test certificate, and a basic Embedded Generation Installation test report. Eskom says these may be signed off by a person registered with the Department of Employment and Labour.

WHO THIS IS NOT FOR

Eskom customers only. Eskom's statement says registration is with your supplier, "which is either Eskom or the local municipality". OUTA puts it plainly: "This position relates specifically to Eskom-supplied customers. Municipal electricity distributors may have separate requirements".

If you buy your power from a municipality, this waiver is not yours. Phone them.

THE ARGUMENT STILL RUNNING

OUTA, on 10 September 2026, says Eskom "has not demonstrated the legal authority to compel households to register compliant, behind-the-meter solar PV". It also reports that "Eskom has confirmed that customers will not simply be fined or disconnected for failing to register their residential solar systems."

That dispute is about whether you must register at all. Today is only about whether it is free.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO A GUEST HOUSE OWNER

If you put in panels and a battery so load shedding would stop ruining breakfast, you are an embedded generator on Eskom's books whether anyone told you or not. It applies to a grid tied system even where it never sends a unit back.

Three things.

If your paperwork is already in a file, submit it today. That is a morning of admin against a fee Eskom values in the thousands.

If you have no Certificate of Compliance, you are not going to make today. Phone your installer this morning and ask for it anyway. Your insurer will want it whatever Eskom does.

If your place runs genuinely off grid, IOL reports Eskom still wants a declaration and proof it operates independently of its supply.

And if anybody tells you today's date means switching your solar off tomorrow, it does not. The date is about fees, not your panels.

SOURCES
https://www.eskom.co.za/eskom-extends-rooftop-solar-registration-fee-waiver-by-six-months-and-advances-prepaid-residential-option/
https://iol.co.za/news/south-africa/2026-09-11-have-rooftop-solar-panels-eskom-wants-you-to-do-this-before-the-september-deadline/
https://www.outa.co.za/blog/newsroom-1/eskom-backs-down-on-solar-threats-as-outa-challenges-registration-powers-1520

Thursday, 26 March 2026: Eskom is strengthening its support for customers using Small-Scale Embedded Generation (SSEG) systems, such as rooftop solar, by ext...

29/09/2026

Enquiries are down on last year and nothing about the place has changed. Same rooms, same breakfast, same you.

Here is one reason nobody explains.

A guest choosing where to stay does not read your description first. They scroll a row of small pictures. Yours sits next to eight other places in your town. Most of it is decided right there, before anybody clicks.

Booking.com publishes exactly what it wants from those pictures. It is on their partner help pages, free to read, and almost no guest house owner has ever been pointed to it.

At least 10 photos.

At least four photos of every room or unit, and at least one of the bathroom and toilet.

Landscape only. Their words: "Shoot landscape images (horizontal) only."

High resolution. At least 2048 x 1080 pixels, and they would rather have 4000 x 3000.

Shoot from a height of three to five feet. About chest height on most people.

Now the part that catches nearly everyone. Your phone takes photos standing up. Turn it sideways. That one change puts your pictures inside the rules.

They also list what they will not accept. Blurry or grainy pictures. Heavy filters. Collages. Watermarks. Black and white. Extreme wide angle or fisheye. Pictures with road signs, parked cars, or a person you could recognise in them.

Booking.com puts it plainly: "Images are what customers remember most about your property page."

None of this costs money. It is one morning, your phone held sideways, and a bit of patience with the bathroom.

And they are not Booking.com's photos. They are yours. The same set does the work on Airbnb, on LekkeSlaap, and on your Google listing.

Take the free check and see where your listings stand. Fifteen questions, all multiple choice, under a minute. Nothing to look up.

https://survey.zohopublic.com/zs/bjBnLN?Lead_Source=Facebook

Open to any guest house or B and B in South Africa, member or not.

The GHASA team

29/09/2026

THE BRIEF | Tuesday 29 September

A national day of protest is set for tomorrow, Wednesday 30 September, with marches announced for Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and other major cities. No routes and no start times have been published. If you have guests arriving, leaving or booked on a transfer tomorrow, today is the day to talk to them.

WHAT HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED

BusinessTech reported on 28 September 2026 that the protest group March and March has called mass action for tomorrow. The report says: "That mass action is now set to take place on Wednesday, 30 September."

On where, it says the marches "will take place in Pretoria, Joburg, Durban, Cape Town, and other major cities."

The group's leader is named as Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma. The day combines two things it has called for. A men's march against gender based violence and crime, and its next national day of protest against undocumented immigration. It follows a similar day the group held on 30 June 2026.

Briefly News, published 28 September 2026 at 16:01, reports the same date and the same four cities.

WHAT THE POLICE HAVE SAID

Eyewitness News reported on 8 September 2026 that Deputy National Police Commissioner Tebello Mosikili said there would be no special budget for the day.

Her words: "Normal policing will continue. There will be no specific budget." And: "We work on the budget allocated on the baseline and we are continuing."

WHAT WE COULD NOT FIND

No assembly points. No start times. No routes. No metro police or municipal road closure notice for any of the four cities. We looked this morning and found none.

We could not confirm whether the gatherings have been authorised by the municipalities concerned.

So we cannot tell you which roads to avoid, and we will not guess. Phone your local police station and your municipality's traffic or metro police line today and ask what they know about your area.

WHAT HAPPENED ON 30 JUNE

BusinessTech reports that R600 million was allocated to peacekeeping operations on the day and only R306 million was spent. It reports at least one fatality linked to the protests, over 900 arrests, and business losses that were "largely restricted to the township economy".

It also reports that "the mass disruptions expected on the day did not materialise".

Read both halves of that. June was quieter than people feared, and it was not nothing.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO A GUEST HOUSE OWNER

Your guests are the people who do not know. A visitor from overseas, or from another province, has seen none of this. They will get into a car tomorrow and drive through a city centre because the map said so.

Four things worth doing today.

Tell them. Tonight, or at breakfast tomorrow. Say there is a national protest day, that no routes have been published, and that they should leave early and check before driving into a city centre. Keep it factual and short.

Check your transfers. If you have an airport run booked for tomorrow, phone the driver today and agree what happens if a road is closed. Leaving an hour early costs nothing. A missed flight costs you the guest.

Check your staff. Ask who is travelling by taxi or bus tomorrow, and agree now what happens if they cannot get in, or cannot get home. Put it in writing so nobody loses a day's pay over a misunderstanding.

Check your deliveries. Laundry, food and gas all arrive by road. Ask each supplier today whether tomorrow's delivery is coming.

If something happens near you tomorrow, your guests will ask you before anyone else. Decide this morning what you will say.

SOURCES
https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/877174/national-shutdown-hitting-south-africa-this-week/
https://briefly.co.za/south-africa/254422-south-africa-braces-march-marchs-30-september-national-protest/
https://www.ewn.co.za/2026/09/08/no-extra-police-funding-for-planned-anti-migrant-protests-following-september-30-ultimatum

Protest group March and March is readying another national day of mass protest this week, with action planned in Joburg, Pretoria, Durban and other major cities.

27/09/2026

A guest sends a message at nine at night asking whether you have parking. You see it at half past six the next morning, between the eggs and the checkout. By then they have booked somewhere else.

That is not carelessness. That is what running a guest house looks like.

You built this place when it was simpler. Clean rooms, a proper breakfast, and people who told their friends. That worked for years. Then the rules changed and nobody sent a letter to say so.

Here is what changed. The booking is now won or lost on Booking.com, Airbnb, LekkeSlaap and Google, long before anyone reaches your own website. Those sites keep a score on you.

Airbnb publishes its bar in plain words. To hold Superhost status a host must reply to 90 percent of new messages, and accept or decline booking requests, within 24 hours. That is the standard. Not instant. Just within a day, nearly every time.

Booking.com gives your property page a score out of 100. Its own guidance asks for at least 10 photos, a photo of the bathroom, bed sizes and room sizes, information about the area around you, and directions to your door.

Google says local results come down to relevance, distance and how well known you are, and that businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up. It also says replying to reviews helps you stand out.

Read that list again. Photos. Bed sizes. Directions. Answering messages. Replying to reviews.

Not one line of it is about your beds, your breakfast, or the way you look after people. That is the hard part of all this. The thing you are best at is not the thing being measured before the guest ever meets you.

Meanwhile the house down the road has a lock box on the gate and nobody on site. No breakfast. No one to carry a bag. But that operator has one job, and it is the listing. They are not cooking. They are not doing the books. They are not standing at reception or phoning someone about the geyser. They can answer a message the minute it arrives.

You have fifteen jobs. The listing gets done at eleven at night, if it gets done.

So it starts to feel like this. Fewer enquiries than last year. More empty nights out of season. More people asking for a discount. The same hours for less money at the end of the month.

It feels personal. It is not. It is a shelf you were never shown.

The good news is that most of this costs nothing but an afternoon. The photos come off your phone. The bed sizes you already know. The directions you have given a hundred times on the telephone.

We built a free check so you can see where you actually stand. Fifteen questions, all multiple choice, under a minute. Nothing to look up and no report to wait for.

https://survey.zohopublic.com/zs/bjBnLN?Lead_Source=Facebook

The booking sites are not the enemy here. They send you real guests and they charge real commission for it. This is about earning more from the money you are already paying them.

Open to any guest house or B and B in South Africa, member or not.

The GHASA team

26/09/2026

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Darling Lodge Guest House, Darling

A restored Victorian country home on Pastorie Street, three star graded, run by Oliver and Stephan. Nine rooms and suites, a garden that people write about afterwards, and two resident cats called Nala and Leopold who have opinions about visiting pets.

What you get:
- Nine rooms and suites, en suite, some with a Victorian bath
- A swimming pool with an open air lounge
- A library, an honesty bar, and a TV lounge looking onto the garden
- Full English breakfast, cooked rather than laid out
- Secure off street parking and free Wi-Fi
- English, French and German spoken

Every room is named for a local artist, and their work hangs in it. Guests do buy it off the walls. That is the point.

There is no television in the bedrooms, and that is deliberate. No braai. Children over twelve only. The whole place is built around the idea that you came here to stop.

Darling is an hour north of Cape Town and most people treat it as a day trip, back on the N7 by four. The w**e route and the restaurants are walking distance from the front door. Stay the night.

Book direct: https://www.darlinglodge.co.za

Darling Lodge is a GHASA member.

23/09/2026

THE BRIEF | Wednesday 23 September

The fuel price changes on Wednesday 7 October. On the Central Energy Fund's own running numbers it is going up by more than two rand a litre, and diesel by more than that. If you quote guests a fixed transfer price, or you run a generator, those numbers are about to stop working.

WHERE THE PRICE IS NOW

From the CEF media statement dated 28 August 2026, released on behalf of the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources. It fixes these prices "FOR THE PERIOD 02/09/2026 TO 06/10/2026".

Inland, petrol 95 unleaded, R26,92 a litre. Petrol 93, R26,76. Coastal, petrol 95, R26,05.

Diesel is a wholesale price, not a pump price. Inland 0,05 percent sulphur, R29,1111. Inland 0,005 percent, R29,5551. Coastal 0,05 percent, R28,2391.

WHAT THE CEF FILE SAYS

The CEF publishes a daily basic fuel price file. The one dated 21 September 2026 gives the average unit under recovery for 28 August to 21 September as: petrol 95, 283,395 cents a litre. Petrol 93, 266,404. Diesel 0,05 percent, 260,819. Diesel 0,005 percent, 301,376. Illuminating paraffin, 314,624.

An under recovery is the gap the price has to close. Add those figures to the prices above and inland 95 lands near R29,75, and inland 0,005 percent diesel near R32,57. That arithmetic is ours, done off the CEF's numbers.

TWO REASONS IT IS NOT FINAL

One. The month is not over. Those are averages to 21 September, and the figure moves every trading day. African Insider on 9 September reported an under recovery of R1,93 on 95. InBound SA on 14 September put the projected 95 increase at R2,14. The CEF file on 21 September says R2,834. It has widened each time, and it can narrow.

Two. The under recovery is not the whole adjustment. Slate levy and margin changes are added at month end and can push it either way. The September increase included a slate levy rise of 21,90 cents a litre.

The official figure comes from the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources at month end. Do not print a rate card or a package price off anybody's projection, this one included. CEF enquiries, Robert Maake on 082 773 2306 or J Mokobane on 082 766 3674.

CEF's own price history shows inland 95 at R28,06 from 3 June 2026, the highest it has been. On the 21 September numbers, October passes that.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO A GUEST HOUSE OWNER

Your guests drive here. R2,834 a litre is R141,70 on a fifty litre tank, each way. People doing a long weekend in October are doing that sum before they book.

Your transfers. If you quote a fixed price for an airport run or a w**e route day, you set it against R26,92 fuel. From 7 October you absorb the difference on every trip. Reprice it this week, or say in writing that transfers are quoted at fuel cost on the day.

Your generator. The grade rising fastest is 0,005 percent diesel, R3,01 a litre on the CEF running average. The first week of October is the wrong week to have an empty tank.

Your suppliers. Laundry collection, food deliveries and gas all carry fuel in the price. Ask each one this week whether their delivery charge is fixed or fuel linked, and get it in writing before the October invoices come.

And if you are quoting festive season packages with any driving in them, quote off the October number, not today's.

SOURCES
https://cefgroup.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Daily-21-09-2026.pdf
https://cefgroup.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Press-Release-28-August-2026-Change-02-September-2026.pdf
https://cefgroup.co.za/daily-basic-fuel-price/

22/09/2026

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Sunset Manor Guest House, Potchefstroom

A purpose built guest house on the edge of the Mooi River marshland, four star graded, with horses on the fence line and birdsong in the morning. It is named after the sunsets, which tells you what the owners think the best part of the day is.

What you get:
- Rooms with a king bed or two singles, extra length mattresses, en suite
- A kitchenette in every unit, bar fridge, microwave, kettle
- A sitting area and a proper work station, not a chair and a windowsill
- Private entrance to each unit, flat screen with DStv, air conditioning, mini safe
- Secure undercover parking, one vehicle per unit
- A patio and a pool. Breakfast is optional, served in the dining room

The trick of the place is that it is not out of town. You are minutes from Potchefstroom itself while sitting next to wetland. Van der Hoffpark, with two entrances, on Kanaal Street and Ben Pienaar Street.

Potchefstroom gets filed away as a university town and left there. It is also a river town, and an easy stop if you are heading down from Johannesburg with no wish to arrive anywhere in a hurry.

Book direct: https://sunsetmanorpotch.co.za

Sunset Manor is a GHASA member.

22/09/2026