Really, trust me on this one. Unless you want to lost all sight of your sanity, do not check your change in shops in South Africa. OK, you could perhaps check that you have been given roughly the right amount of notes and maybe even silver coins. But the coppers? Nope, just smile and chuck ’em in your purse.
Here in sunny South Africa, we have a fairly chilled approach to the whole issue of pricing and small change. Currency is pretty easy to get your head around. We have 100 cents to 1 rand. Our coins are 5c (no longer minted but still in circulation), 10c, 20c, 50c, R1, R2 and R5. Notes are R10, R20, R50, R100 and R200. Simple huh? Well, it would be except that whilst the government stopped production of 1 and 2 cent coins in 2002, shops still price goods in the retailers’ favourite of 99 cent increments. Yes, it has been 14 years and we still haven’t realised that in the absence of a 1 cent means that it really is a little tricky to give someone the correct change when they buy something requiring you to give them change in anything other than multiples of 5.
The more sophisticated stores have tills which automatically operate a rounding system, so your till slip will show an adjusted amount and your change will match up accordingly. Less high tech establishments will tell you that your purchases came to, for example, R38.97 and proceed to give you either R1.05 or R1.10 or maybe just R1.00 depending on what is available in the till. Generally, the inability to give the correct change is worked in your favour, although there is one particular large chain who will always keep the change if the purchase amount comes to more than .95. Which I guess is one way to boost your profits. As 5c coins are sometimes hard to come by, stores will happily just give you 10c change instead of 1c. How they balance up those tills at the end of the day is anyone’s guess.
So, in the words of a car park ticket machine… 
but I really wouldn’t bother to try to check it.
African Crossroad 