After top-level intervention, the Department of Home Affairs has taken a new look at work permits for foreigners, writes Marion Edmunds
IT took the Irish ambassador to jog the South African government into realising it needed to ease up on its immigration rules to allow foreign investors, and foreign government-sponsored consultants into the country.
Ambassador Eamon O’Toole, after consultations with other European ambassadors over problems with the Department of Home Affairs, made a number of high-level representations to the departments of Foreign Affairs and Home Affairs earlier this year to try and smooth the passage of foreign citizens who wished to work in South Africa.
O’Toole said he had responded to a call for help from an Irish citizen who was battling to get a work permit to work in a company in Cape Town, which is a subsidiary of an Irish firm and employs about 13 South Africans.
“I discussed this with my European colleagues and found that the problem was quite widespread. Then I discussed it with everybody I could find, including the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad. I wrote a letter to the Minister of Home Affairs, Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
“It seems that things have improved because of these discussions. South Africa has its own rules, I understand, but you need foreign investment for employment.”
Thanks to the ambassador’s intervention, Home Affairs now automatically gives two- year work permits to Europeans who are coming to South Africa to work in European- based subsidiary companies. Their spouses and children automatically get permits as well.
And while that may be a giant leap forward for Home Affairs, South Africa’s image abroad was tarnished this week by media reports that a high-level consultant, appointed by the German government’s Credit Institute for Reconstruction, had had difficulties getting the right papers to stay in South Africa.
Home Affairs originally did not want to provide the consultant, James Hokens, with a work permit because he did not have a German service pass or a diplomatic passport. The German embassy could not give him either because he was an American national.
“The matter is being resolved,” said Hokens from Johannesburg this week. “The Department of Housing has been negotiating with the minster of home affairs to sort this out and I have now got an exemption. It was just a pain because I could not open a bank account and had no legal standing when I arrived. It also hampered the development of the project.”
Hokens is the chief technical advisor to the Rural Housing Loan Fund through which a sum of 50-million Deutschmarks is being channeled for housing. He said negotiations between the two governments were reaching a conclusion, and “great progress had been made”, despite the negative reports from Bonn.
Hokens, who worked in Namibia after independence, said South Africa would eventually realise the need to co-ordinate the departments of Foreign Affairs, Finance and Home Affairs in order to facilitate investment.
“It took Namibia four years to realise the need for co-ordination across ministries and eventually they set up a planning commission in the Finance Ministry to work this out. Once South Africa does the same people will find it easy to invest. The problems encountered now are a reflection of a country just emerging into the global economy. There is a need for some flexibility and understanding by government ministries, otherwise people can be very legalistic and unconstructive.”
According to the German embassy’s Jutte Wolke, things improved after the Irish ambassador made representations to the South African government.
“We were able to bring in a brass band earlier this year without them having to have work permits so we are seeing an improvement in our cultural exchanges.”