CAO Contact Details and Office Opening Dates in South Africa

Need to get hold of the Central Applications Office (CAO) in South Africa? Start with the details on cao.ac.za for the current application cycle. Numbers, office hours and opening periods shift from one cycle to the next, and older guides keep repeating details that have already changed. Here you get the details confirmed in CAO’s 2027 Entry FAQs when this page was written, the safest way to reach CAO, and a clear warning about the details that source did not confirm.

One thing to settle first: this page is about South Africa’s CAO, based in KwaZulu-Natal. Ireland’s CAO is a separate organisation altogether, with its own website and its own ways of being contacted.

Verified CAO contact details

Every detail in the table below comes from the CAO 2027 Entry FAQs on cao.ac.za, checked on 1 November 2026. Try these first before anything else you find online.

For general questions, that call centre number is the main route the 2027 FAQs publish. Payment questions have their own dedicated route in the FAQs, covered further down this page. For almost everything else, either ring the call centre in office hours or use the matching online function on cao.ac.za.

CAO office opening dates: what the dates mean

For the 2027 entry cycle, CAO’s FAQs put face-to-face office opening at 02 March 2026 to 30 November 2026. Treat that as this cycle’s window only — not a standing calendar you can rely on year after year.

Never assume a later cycle keeps the same dates. Each new entry year brings its own handbook and FAQs, and its own opening window. Before you travel to Durban, read the current handbook and FAQs on cao.ac.za, and think about ringing first in office hours to make sure face-to-face services will actually be running on the day you plan to go.

The call centre hours in the FAQs belong to this cycle too: Monday to Thursday 08h00–16h30, and Friday 08h00–14h00, except public holidays. Ring on a public holiday or after hours and you will get the self-help option on the same number — for anything that needs a person, try again in office hours.

How to contact CAO South Africa: choose the right route

For a general enquiry

Ring the call centre on 031 268 4444 in office hours, or +27 31 268 4444 if you are outside South Africa. Before you dial, have your CAO number handy if you have one, along with the date you applied and a short summary of the problem. Never read your password out to anyone — not even to a call centre agent, who does not need it for a general enquiry.

For an application status check

Most of the time, a status check needs no phone call at all. Open Check My Application on cao.ac.za and enter just ONE identifier — your CAO number, South African ID number or passport number. No password is involved in that checker. The separate applicant login, which does use your CAO number and password, is for finishing an application, uploading documents or updating details. Picking the right route saves you a call and shows your current status straight away.

For a payment query

For money questions, CAO’s 2027 FAQs point to a dedicated payment-query email route. That address covers cases like paying yet still getting a message asking you to pay, or paying too much by mistake and wanting a refund. Email addresses are easy to mistype, and third-party guides copy them wrong all the time — so look up the exact payment-query address on the current CAO FAQs page on cao.ac.za before you send proof of payment or banking details, and include your CAO reference number in your message. Never send a payment query to a general address you found on an unofficial site.

For updating contact details

Contact changes only happen online. On cao.ac.za, open “Update My Details”, sign in with your CAO number and password, choose the fields you want to change, look them over under “Summary details”, then click “Process My Updates”. A phone call on its own will not change your email address or cellphone number in the system.

For reporting a website error

For a website fault, use the “Report an error” function on cao.ac.za, as listed in the FAQs. Write down which page or button failed, which device and browser you were using, and the exact error message you saw. Those details help CAO work out whether the fault sits with the site or with one particular device or connection.

For an institution decision, offer or registration question

For this one, go straight to the institution. It is the institution that decides who gets selected; CAO takes in and processes applications and hands them on. You will find institution contact details through CAO’s website and handbook — use the institution’s own published route for accepting an offer, for registration, and for questions about a specific programme. And do not pay any acceptance fee to CAO: the FAQs are clear that you tell the institution, not CAO, whether you accept, and you pay acceptance fees exactly as the institution directs.

CAO office address in Durban

The address the 2027 FAQs confirm is Gate 11, Mary Thiphe Street (previously Cato Manor Road), Durban. Some older guides tack a complex or campus name onto it. That extra bit did not appear in the address line of the 2027 FAQs checked for this page, so it is not repeated here as verified. Gate 11 and Mary Thiphe Street on their own identify the office on the official address — but still check the current FAQs before you travel, and leave time for security or visitor procedures at the gate.

Thinking of hand-delivering a document? Check the current handbook or FAQs first to see whether that type of document is taken by hand, by upload or by post in your cycle. Most documents now go up online through Upload My Documents, so a trip to Durban may not be needed at all.

What was NOT confirmed, and why this guide omits it

You will see older and third-party guides listing extra CAO contact details — a sharecall number, a postal address, several general enquiry email addresses. None of those were confirmed on the CAO 2027 Entry FAQs page on cao.ac.za when this page was written.

So this page does not present them as current, verified ways to reach CAO — and that gap is on purpose. Putting an old sharecall number, an old postal address or a guessed general email address out there as fact could send your message somewhere wrong, or nowhere at all, and leave you waiting for help with a deadline getting closer.

If a third-party guide hands you a number, email or postal address that is missing from the table above, do not trust it. Head to cao.ac.za, open the current FAQs or contact section, and use only what you see there. If one particular document needs a postal route, check the current handbook for that document type — postal instructions can change from one document and one cycle to the next.

Take the same care with office hours copied from older cycles. A few older guides show a straight Monday-to-Friday 08h00–16h30 pattern. The 2027 FAQs checked here give Friday as 08h00–14h00, not 16h30. Go by the current cycle’s hours, not by a pattern you remember.