In every interaction I have with business, big and small, domestic and international, the broken visa regime in South Africa is a stand-out factor holding back their investment, growth and ability to create jobs.

The huge inefficiencies relating to almost every category of visas, including remote working, critical skills, spousal, e-visas, investment, and retirement visas remain a significant deterrent to investment and expansion of existing businesses, costing jobs and economic growth right at a time when we cannot afford to lose one rand or job.

The national Department of Home Affairs is not oblivious to this, and two seemingly positive announcements have recently been made towards a remedy. Last week, a revised Critical Skills List (updated to include only veterinarians and veterinary nurses) was gazetted for comment, and this week a pilot scheme to fast-track visa applications for senior executives, technical personnel, corporate employees, and investors was announced.

While these may seem like laudable steps in the right direction, if you scratch the surface, the reality is that we’re merely treading water and going nowhere very, very slowly on the road to unlocking economic growth and job creation.

Read more in Daily Maverick: South Africa’s visa regime keeps out badly needed skilled workers

In early September, the Department of Higher Education and Training’s Labour Market Intelligence Unit released a survey to identify occupations in high demand, occupational shortages, and skills gaps in South Africa, and at a provincial level. The survey closed on 13 September 2023, meaning that the vital insights are very unlikely to have been incorporated into the most recent critical skills list.

To facilitate foreign investment, companies need to access South Africa easily. Individuals who apply for critical skills visas typically help develop new sectors or expand existing ones, contribute to increasing the complexity of the economy by bringing in skills that are not currently available, and help new industries through skills development in South Africa.

This is why efficient processing of critical skills visas is key for economic growth and job creation. It’s also why the pilot scheme to fast-track senior and corporate employees won’t get us there without a jolting injection of practical sense.

SMME growth and critical skills

Yes, we need interventions at this level, but we can’t only be looking at large corporates and those that employ hundreds of South Africans already. We need to urgently enable the engines of our economic growth — small, medium and micro enterprises and start-ups in key growth-enabling sectors like manufacturing, business-process outsourcing (BPO) and agriculture, to source key skills and play their part in driving growth, hope and jobs across the country.

However, it cannot end there. Remote working and spousal visas, linked to critical skills, are also vital. It seems obvious, but the connections are not being drawn where they should be. People with critical skills will and do think twice about bringing their expertise to South Africa if their families aren’t able to join them with certainty.

This is exactly why the director of the Stellenbosch Business School, Professor Mark Smith, recently left South Africa and took his skills with him — South Africa’s severely compromised and inefficient visa regime meant that his family had no certainty about when or whether they would ever be able to join him in South Africa.

Investors stay out?

It’s easy to see the message that this bungling and dysfunction sends to the international investment and global corporate community: South Africa is effectively closed for business.

Even those who don’t want or need to work anymore aren’t being made welcome. In the case of retirement visas, a reply to a recent parliamentary question in the National Assembly revealed that in the last three years, South Africa has lost 499 retirement visa opportunities, resulting in a potential loss of approximately R18.5-million per month to the economy.

The 12-month processing time for retirement visa applications acts as another deterrent for applicants. These highly mobile global citizens quickly explore alternative options in competing countries, and they purchase homes and invest their forex elsewhere. The economic benefits of “swallows” are well known and often offer great support to smaller and rural towns.

Poor, indifferent service

The e-visa system for tourists, introduced to alleviate backlogs for visitors, is as shambolic. At the end of last year, Home Affairs confirmed that the reason for rejecting 58% of the 6,329 e-visa applications it received was because they simply didn’t get to the applications in time.

In the Western Cape, we are preparing for what promises to be a bumper summer tourism season, with 215 international flights arriving at Cape Town International Airport each week from January 2024.

Many of these visitors will want to stay longer, both here and across South Africa. Our visa regime should make this as easy as possible so that our economy and people can benefit from the economic boost and jobs that would come from the increased spend and flexibility in how these visitors spend their time and forex.

In 2022, our Western Cape provincial Department of Economic Development and Tourism conducted a survey on businesses’ challenges with the South African visa system. That survey, across technology, tourism, finance and business, manufacturing, agriculture/agri-processing and BPO, revealed that 78% of respondents rated South Africa’s immigration application system as very poor compared to other countries in which they operated.

And 26% of those businesses moved their operations overseas, costing countless jobs in South Africa because of the serious challenges they faced with the national visa system.

An honest confrontation of where we are as a country is needed. We have a clear and easy opportunity to enable economic growth and job creation by making it as easy as possible for global citizens who wish to work, invest, retire, share their skills, and visit this wonderful county, to do so.

But we have run out of road and are heading straight towards a fiscal cliff. It is time that we take the obvious course-correcting measures that will help us avoid catastrophe, setting us on a road to economic prosperity for all. DM