A posting calendar for South African retail: grant days, month-end and public holidays

Shoppers do not spend evenly across the month. The money arrives on a calendar: social grants in the first days of the month, many salaries around the 25th, and public and school holidays that shift them. A retail page that posts to that calendar is useful. One that posts whenever someone has a spare moment is easy to scroll past.

We run the Facebook pages of shopping centres, supermarkets and hardware stores in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), and this is the calendar they run on. Grant dates, public holidays and school terms are set nationally, so it works for any South African retail page whose customers are paid by grant or by salary. How we run those pages day to day is on our page about social media for shopping centres.

Why does a local retail page need its own calendar?

Customers open a centre's page to check something: the trading hours on a public holiday, a store opening, what is on in the school holidays, the competition draw. They are planning a trip, and the trip is planned around when the money arrives. A calendar of themed days and trending topics misses that. The dates that matter are set by SASSA, by employers, and by the holiday and school calendars.

When are social grants paid, and what should the post say?

SASSA sets the payment dates a financial year at a time, starting in April, and the 2026/27 schedule was confirmed in March 2026. The pattern holds: grants are paid early in the month over three days, older persons first, then disability grants, then children's grants. SASSA also avoids paying on the 1st of the month: no date in the 2026/27 schedule falls on it.

The exact days move, because weekends and public holidays push them around. In April 2026, with Good Friday and Family Day in the way, older persons were paid on Thursday 2 April, disability grants on Tuesday 7 April and children's grants on Wednesday 8 April. For October 2026 SASSA set Friday 2, Monday 5 and Tuesday 6 October. In November 2026 the election-day holiday on Wednesday 4 November lands in the grant days, and SASSA has said it will announce a new arrangement, so wait for its list before you post them.

So take the dates from SASSA every month, never from memory or last month's post. The Department of Social Development announces the year's schedule, and the government news service points readers to the full list on SASSA's own website. SASSA also posts payment updates on its official Facebook page, SASSA News, and the national news carries each month's dates in the weeks before. Check before the post is designed, and again before it goes up.

What a good grant dates post does

• It names the month and the year, so nobody acts on an old post.
• It lists the dates day by day, one grant per line, with the weekday.
• It gets the timing word right. A post that goes up on the 1st says the payments start tomorrow, or on Friday, not today.
• It goes up before the window opens. Ours go out at the end of the month before, and in August 2026 that is the post the ad budget went behind.
• It can repeat the reminder that goes out with the dates: the money stays in the account, so there is no need to rush on the first day.

What changes at month-end?

Many employers pay salaries around the 25th, and the spending carries into the first days of the next month, where it meets the grant days. So we plan the month as one busy stretch from about the 25th to about the 7th, with a quieter middle. Month-end carries:

• Specials, in the week they run. A special is only worth posting while the price still holds, so pamphlet deals go up in the week they run.
• The draw. If the centre runs a competition, we open it around the 25th.
• Next month's grant dates, day by day.
• The next stage of the build. Plenty of hardware customers build in stages: cement this month, bricks next, paint after. So a hardware store's page posts for the next stage.

Price questions under a specials post get a private reply, not a public one.

What goes up in the middle of the month?

In our planning, the 8th to the 24th is the quiet part of the month. That is the time for posts that keep the page useful without a price on them: tenant news, a store opening, what is on in the school holidays, a staff member people know, and the neighbourhood itself.

Which public holidays change what a centre posts?

Every public holiday brings the same question: what time are you open? Answer it a few days before, not on the morning, and list the stores separately when their hours differ. When a public holiday falls on a Sunday, the Monday after it is a public holiday too. In 2026 that made Monday 10 August a public holiday.

South Africa's public holidays in 2026, from the government's published list, plus the election day the President declared a public holiday on 15 September 2026:

When a holiday falls inside the busy stretch, as Freedom Day did in April 2026, we plan an extra post around it.

Where do school terms and holidays fit?

In 2026 the school year opened on Wednesday 14 January, so January carries the back-to-school posts: uniforms, stationery and lunchbox items. In 2026 the breaks run from late March into April, late June into July, late September into October, and from December into the new year. The exact days change from year to year, so check the school calendar the government publishes for that year before you plan a term.

In the school holidays the page answers a different question: what is on for the children? Post it at the start of the break, and again halfway through.

How do you plan the festive season?

December breaks the pattern. The grant days still come early: in December 2026 they are Wednesday 2, Thursday 3 and Friday 4 December. Then schools close for the year, and three public holidays fall between 16 and 26 December. We plan December as one long pay stretch, from mid-December to after Christmas. Post the festive trading hours early, as one clear post, and repeat them before each holiday.

Meta Business Suite lets a page schedule a post up to 29 days ahead, so the festive hours can be scheduled from the last week of November, once the stores have confirmed them.

How do tenant posts fit around the centre's calendar?

A centre and the stores inside it share customers, so they should share the calendar. When a store in the centre has a special or news, it goes out once, as a collaboration post from the centre and the store together.

Meta shows a collaborative post on the centre's page and the store's page, each listed as a co-author, once the store accepts the invite. Meta's help page on collaborative posts has the steps. One catch matters for planning: Meta does not let you schedule a photo post that has a collaborator on it. So tenant photo posts go out live on the day, with someone at the store ready to accept.

Where do Meta ads go on this calendar?

An ad goes on a post customers already want: the pay dates, a big special, the draw. It is aimed at the suburbs your customers come from, tested small, and scaled only when it brings enquiries or visits.

Meta reviews every ad before it runs, and Meta's help page on ads in review says most are reviewed within 24 hours, with some taking longer. So a grant-day ad is submitted days ahead with its start date scheduled: it goes through review in the meantime and does not start delivering before that date. Changing the picture or the text sends it back for review, while changing the budget or the schedule does not.

In Ads Manager the budget is either a daily budget, which is an average across the week and not a hard cap, or a lifetime budget, which is a hard cap for the whole run and suits an ad with a fixed start and end, like a grant window. The monthly performance summary shows what the ads brought in.

What does a month look like at three posts a week?

Three posts a week comes to about twelve a month. This is how we spread them:

Plan the holiday and school break posts first, then fill the month around them.

• Next month's grant dates checked with SASSA and written day by day, with the weekday, the month and the year.
• The timing word checked: "tomorrow" or "from Friday", never "today" unless the post goes up that morning.
• A trading hours post booked for the days before every public holiday in the month.
• Each tenant asked for its specials and news, so they go out as collaboration posts.
• School holiday dates checked, with what is on at the centre.
• Any grant-day or month-end ad submitted early, with its start date scheduled.
• Scheduled posts kept inside Meta's 29-day window, and collaboration photo posts kept for the day.
• At least one mid-month post about the place itself, with no price on it.