Uniform Rule 1

How court days are counted in South Africa

5 min read

Nearly every deadline in South African civil litigation is expressed in court days, and nearly every attorney has at some point counted them on a desk calendar. The rule itself is short, but three details in it account for most of the errors: which day the count starts on, which public holidays fall inside the period, and the fact that two of those holidays move every year.

The definition

Rule 1 of the Uniform Rules of Court provides that a court day means a day that is not a public holiday, Saturday or Sunday, and that only court days shall be included in the computation of any time expressed in days prescribed by the Rules or fixed by an order of court.

Two things follow that are easy to miss. First, the definition governs periods fixed by an order of court, not only periods in the Rules — so a judge's direction to deliver something within ten days is ten court days unless the order says otherwise. Second, weekends and public holidays are not merely excluded from the deadline; they are not counted at all. A ten-day period is ten working days of the court, however many calendar days that turns out to be.

Which day is day one

The day on which the triggering event happens is not counted. The count starts on the next court day, and the last day of the period is included. A summons served on a Monday therefore gives a first day of Tuesday, and a ten court day period expires at the end of the tenth court day after service.

Put the other way round: if you want to know whether a period was met, count from the day after the trigger up to and including the day the step was taken. This is the arithmetic the calculators on this site use in both directions, which is why counting forward from a date and then counting back between the two gives the same number.

The public holidays

South African public holidays are set by the Public Holidays Act 36 of 1994. Twelve are fixed to a calendar date or to Easter, and the Act adds a thirteenth in the years when one of them falls on a Sunday.

Section 2(1) of the Act provides that whenever a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the following Monday is a public holiday too. The rule runs one way only. A holiday falling on a Saturday gains nothing — it is already a non-court day, and no weekday is added in its place. Human Rights Day in 2026 falls on a Saturday, so it takes nothing out of that year's count.

Good Friday and Family Day move with Easter, which is why a period of the same length can expire on different dates in different years. The President may also proclaim a once-off public holiday, as happened for national election days; those are not in the Act and have to be added by hand.

A worked example

A combined summons is served on Monday 3 August 2026. The defendant has ten court days to deliver a notice of intention to defend under Rule 19(1).

• The count starts Tuesday 4 August, not Monday 3 August.
• Two weekends fall inside the period, taking out four days.
• National Women's Day falls on Sunday 9 August 2026, so Monday 10 August is a public holiday under section 2(1) and does not count either.
• The tenth court day is therefore Tuesday 18 August 2026 — fifteen calendar days after service.

Counted on a calendar without the Monday observance, the same period lands on 17 August, and a notice delivered on the eighteenth looks a day late when it is not. That single shifted holiday is the most common counting error in the first fortnight of a defended action.

Where court days are not the unit

Not every period is in court days. Section 24 of the Superior Courts Act gives a defendant served outside the Division's area of jurisdiction one month, or two weeks, depending on distance — calendar periods, not court days. Prescription runs in years. Rule 70 taxation periods have their own arrangements. When a period is expressed in weeks, months or years, the court day definition does not apply to it at all, and a calculator set to court days will give the wrong answer.