President Cyril Ramaphosa has praised the measures gazetted by Home Affairs minister Leon Schreiber to amend the visa system and ease the burdens of doing business.
South Africa’s restrictive and cumbersome visa system has long been a headache for business. The reforms included introducing a Remote Work Visa for people employed internationally while being able to operate physically in South Africa, and the introduction of a points-based immigration system to attract skilled people to the country.
Ramaphosa described this as the implementation of the Operation Vulindlela initiative, which seeks to remove blockages to economic activity.
A statement put out by The Presidency was at pains to emphasise that these measures were intended to ensure that South Africans were not exposed to competition for employment.
Referring to the points-based visa system, it stated: “The new system, which was a key recommendation of the work visa review published in 2023, introduces a transparent set of criteria to objectively determine who qualifies for a Critical Skills or General Work Visa.
This will better protect existing jobs at the lower end of the labour market while injecting skills at the top.
These reforms remove bureaucratic hurdles and are designed to make it easier for South African companies and multinationals to hire skilled workers, as well as making South Africa a realistic prospect for remote workers seeking an opportunity to combine work with tourism.”
Minister Schreiber has attracted much attention for the energy he has invested in his portfolio.
Commenting on the new visa regime, he said: “A key aspect of the GNU’s collective mandate was outlined by President Ramaphosa at the opening of Parliament in July when he said, ‘Overhaul the visa regime to attract skills and investment and grow the tourism sector.’ Just three months later, #TeamHomeAffairs delivers, through the single most pro-jobs regulatory reform South Africa has seen in decades.
“The Department’s meticulous attention to detail to ensure that these reforms are fit-for-purpose and market-friendly has resulted in two products that begin to reposition South Africa as a world-class destination for investment and tourism, to create thousands of new jobs for South Africans.
“Importantly, the new points-based system also introduces a transparent framework to adjudicate visas in order to tackle corruption.”
[Image: https://x.com/Leon_Schreib/status/1808464119638675794/photo/1]