Missed the 30 days? What CCMA condonation actually requires explains what condonation is. This guide is about the application itself: what goes in it, where it goes, and what tends to decide it. It explains the Rules generally. It is not advice about your own case.

First, be sure you are actually late

The 30 days run from the date of dismissal. If you appealed inside the company, they run from the day your employer gave its final decision on the appeal, when that is later. People sometimes apply for condonation they do not need, and sometimes refer confidently when they are two weeks late. Work out the date before you do anything else.

The five things the Rules require

The CCMA Rules list what a condonation application must set out. In plain language:

1. How late you are. The number of days between the deadline and the day you refer. Count it exactly. A commissioner will.

2. Why you are late. The full period, not just part of it. If you were late by 40 days, the explanation has to cover the 40 days, not the first ten. The reasons that carry weight are the ones you can show: a hospital admission, a death in the family, an internal appeal you waited for in good faith, being told something wrong by someone you reasonably relied on. "I did not know about the deadline" is a reason people give often. On its own it tends to carry little, because the deadline is in the Act.

3. Your prospects of success. Why you believe the dismissal was unfair, in enough detail that a commissioner can see there is a real dispute: what you were accused of, what process was followed, and what you say happened. This is the part most people under-write. A condonation application with no real account of the case reads as a request to be let in without saying why it matters.

4. Prejudice to your employer. What the delay costs the other side, if anything. If the people involved are still there and the documents still exist, say so. If your employer has already replaced you or closed the branch, that cuts the other way, and it is better to deal with it than to leave it out.

5. Anything else relevant. The Rules leave this open on purpose. Use it for anything that explains the delay or the case and does not fit above.

How the parts work together

The CCMA weighs the parts together, not in isolation. A short delay with a thin reason can be excused where the case is strong and nobody is prejudiced. A long delay needs a reason that covers all of it, and even then the prospects of the case have to carry real weight. There is no fixed cut-off in the Rules beyond which condonation is impossible, and no number of days that is automatically fine.

Write it the way it happened, in order, with dates. Attach what you can: the hospital letter, the appeal outcome, the email you relied on. A commissioner reading a stack of applications notices the one that is specific.

Where the application goes

With the referral. If you refer by hand, post or email, the condonation application is attached to the referral form, LRA 7.11, and goes in at the same time. If you refer through the CCMA's online portal, condonation can be applied for there as well.

If you referred late without one. The CCMA decides whether condonation is dealt with at a hearing or on written submissions from both sides. Do not rely on that. A referral that arrives late with no application looks like a referral by someone who has not read the form.

The form of it. A condonation application is a formal application under the Rules, with required parts such as the relief you are asking for and an address where documents can be sent to you. The CCMA may assist a referring party to comply with the condonation rule. Ask at the office. It costs nothing to ask.

What a weak application looks like

Three patterns, all common.

The explanation covers the wrong period. "I was in hospital for a week" when the delay is six weeks. The other five need explaining too.

The case is missing. Two pages on why you were late and one line that says "my dismissal was unfair". Prospects of success is one of the five required parts, not an afterthought.

It argues instead of telling. Commissioners read these for a living. A plain, dated account of what happened is more persuasive than adjectives about your employer.

What condonation does not do

It does not decide your case. If it is granted, you are where you would have been on day 29: at the start of the process, with conciliation ahead. If it is refused, the CCMA will not hear the dispute, and the question of whether your dismissal was unfair is never reached. That is why the prospects section matters twice: once to get in, and once because it is the first version of your case anyone official will read.

Before you write it, it is worth knowing whether the case is strong enough to be worth the application. Do you have a CCMA case? How a commissioner decides sets out the questions. FairCase gives you a written read on an unfair dismissal case, with the probability score, the calculation shown, a settlement range and the risks, including when the honest answer is that the case is weak. If you are late, the assessment works out your deadline and tells you so.

Then refer, with the application attached, the way How to refer a dispute to the CCMA, step by step describes.