What if doing right by the person working in your home was as simple as sending a WhatsApp message? That is the idea behind AskMandla.
South Africa (26 August 2026) – Domestic workers, gardeners, nannies and caregivers are part of millions of South African households. They help raise our children, care for our parents, keep our homes running and, in many cases, become people we deeply care about. But for far too long, the systems surrounding domestic employment have not reflected the importance of the work being done.
On this week’s Good Things with Brent Lindeque poddie, I got to chat to Peter Adolphs from AskMandla, and our conversation unpacked a simple but incredibly important idea: domestic work is real work, and the people doing it deserve the same structure and financial dignity that we expect in any other profession.
We first featured AskMandla on Good Things Guy in July, looking at the WhatsApp-first fintech platform that is helping South African households formalise domestic employment without turning the process into an administrative nightmare. Through a simple WhatsApp chat, employers can register employees for UIF, manage contracts, payroll and payslips, handle leave and access basic HR guidance.
And those seemingly small pieces of paperwork can have a much bigger impact than we realise.
Consider something as ordinary as a payslip. Most formally employed South Africans receive one every month without giving it much thought, yet a domestic worker who has spent 10 years working in one or several homes may never have received formal proof of income. That document can become the beginning of a financial identity, helping someone access banking, insurance, savings, credit and other services that may previously have been out of reach. The problem is not necessarily that South African employers do not want to do the right thing. For many households, contracts, UIF registrations and formal payroll processes simply haven’t historically been part of domestic employment because “that’s just the way it’s always been”. AskMandla is challenging that thinking and making it much easier to change.
But the poddie goes much further than how the platform works. My conversation with Peter is really about people, dignity, fairness and what happens when we start looking differently at the people whose work makes our own lives possible.
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