This year marks 30 years since, in Sol Plaatje's words, all South Africans were able to vote as citizens, no longer as outcasts in their native land. While this is welcome, the continued hardship for many people across the country must temper this situation.
The truth is that there is still a long way to go on Nelson Mandela's vaunted long road to freedom, because political freedom has not brought economic freedom to everyone.
It is sobering to see that an economy that was smaller than South Africa in 1994 has outgrown ours over the past 30 years. Meanwhile, no progress has been made in reducing poverty and inequality since 2011.
Having inherited the keys to the political kingdom, we now face economic stagnation, world-class unemployment, and indebted and inefficient state-owned enterprises crippled by poor maintenance and lack of infrastructure investment. There is.
We all know about Eskom's problems, but there are other crises that are eroding our economy. Chief among these is the decline of rail networks and ports that are essential to keeping commercial arteries pumping. South Africa's manufacturing industry is also going backwards, and the economy is being inexorably hollowed out.
Many of these problems are caused by the exodus of skilled professionals. According to the United Nations, nearly one million South Africans had settled abroad by the end of 2020, marking a significant increase in immigration since 2015. Between 2015 and 2020, three times more skilled South Africans left the country than in the previous five years. Improve quality of life, income potential, personal security, and career growth.
This means skills in everything from IT to healthcare are in short supply, hurting companies' ability to innovate and grow. It also threatens the country's tax base, further cuts investment in infrastructure and service delivery, and encourages immigration.
We can all see where this is going.
It may seem hopeless, and it most likely will be if you do nothing, but there are solutions. In the long term, we need to redouble our efforts to repair our broken education system. For example, we can change the economy simply by increasing the number of students enrolling in some degree.
Skills transfer and development
South Africa currently has one of the largest underdeveloped talent pools in the world, with only 4% of those who start school achieving a university degree (compared to around 50% in more developed settings). %). According to World Bank research, one more year of schooling increases productivity and income by 10% per year, while the South African Development Bank reports that households with educated people are more likely to lift themselves out of poverty. ing.
But short-term solutions are also needed. One such immediate solution is to work on skills transfer by attracting people with the skills needed to come to this country. An influx of highly skilled and motivated international talent could help boost business, create jobs, bring in much-needed government tax revenue and get the economy moving again.
Many people want to come to this beautiful country, including senior executives, IT specialists, technicians, and engineers, but few can get a visa to live here.
Significant visa delays and refusals
A study conducted by the SA Presidency found that a whopping 52% of all visa applications between 2014 and 2021 were refused. Those who manage to obtain a visa must jump through numerous hurdles and face lengthy delays of up to 48 weeks. This is less than one month a year, which is critical for foreign companies looking to invest and expand their operations in the country.
In some cases, even when candidates with poor skills obtain visas, their partners and children still have to wait through a never-ending process.
And as South Africa's economic growth prospects slump, it's not just big foreign multinationals that are at war with the authorities and bureaucracy, but small and medium-sized enterprises as well. Not surprisingly, many companies with offices here, especially regional headquarters, are considering relocating to African countries where the day-to-day challenges are less surmountable.
Hanlon's Razor famously urges us not to attribute problems to malice when they can be adequately explained by stupidity. It's fascinating to watch the Home Office, a modern-day Kafkaesque hellhole of endless queues and incompetent tails of fickle mainframe computer systems that crash more often than Eskom's warehouses.
Read more at Daily Maverick: Go for a hike: Home Office note on visas scares away seasonal foreigners or 'swallows'
Indeed, the Home Secretary has admitted that the Home Office is understaffed and its IT systems are inefficient and complex. Experts blame the ongoing dysfunction on corruption and mismanagement during President Jacob Zuma's decade of state capture, but is that all there is to it?
Anyone who recently obtained an ID card or a passport, that is, went to a real branch of the Ministry of the Interior and not a bank that provides this service, will know that the Ministry of Interior actually works effectively and efficiently and that digital devices are I know I can use it. We are highly capable of acquiring, creating and distributing high-tech biometric ID documents that meet the highest international standards.
These days, if you make an appointment and apply in advance, you'll often be notified within two weeks when you'll receive your documents.
So what does that leave us with? Were the authorities reluctant to issue visas? The question is why? Is this political, cultural or xenophobic? Are you concerned that bringing in foreigners will take away local jobs?
Need for foreign skills
We all know that local people are dirty, but an influx of foreigners doesn't have to come at the expense of the local area, it can boost its vibrancy. We can build skills faster and more effectively if we hire the right people to boost the economy, teach new skills and create more opportunities for the 61% of unemployed young people.
It has been proven around the world that importing foreign skills can significantly improve local job markets. This is why countries like New Zealand are relaxing visa rules to attract skilled talent to their country, and countries like the UK, Canada and Germany are working hard to attract people across their borders to live and work. That's one of the reasons. their country.
And you can bet that a good number of the people they're seducing are seasoned South Africans.
So what's stopping us from fighting back and increasing our willingness to attract our own talent? The president has identified this skills shortage as the second-biggest impediment to economic growth after power outages. So why is nothing being done about it? Is there some criminal intent behind this gridlock, where people have to pay bribes to get the documents they desperately need? ? Or is it something more sinister? Is there a cabal trying to bankrupt the country in order to rob the graves?
As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary detective Sherlock Holmes used to say, “When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth.” Must”. These questions need to be asked and answered in order to come up with sustainable solutions that can address this problem.
The South Africa we aspire to requires an infusion of uncontested skills. And the situation will only get more dire as the pace of technological innovation outstrips the developed world's ability to keep up with skills development.
As part of a broader strategy to address skills shortages, the ability to quickly and accurately issue skilled immigrant visas will soon become a prerequisite for any country wishing to build a diverse and prosperous economy for decades to come.
I cannot accept that South Africa must continue down the path to destruction. We need to act now to make sure this country is a winner and not a loser in the cutthroat market for talent around the world so we can continue moving toward true freedom. DM
