A System That Promised Hope — and Delivered Frustration
When Sipho, a qualified diesel plant fitter with over 12 years of experience, received a job offer from a mid-sized engineering firm in Johannesburg, it should have been a breakthrough. His skills were in demand, his employer was desperate to fill the role, and he met all the practical requirements. Yet when they applied for a work visa under the new points-based system, the application failed. The reason? Sipho didn’t earn enough. Despite his trade certification and years of experience, he fell short of the salary threshold needed to score the magic 100 points.
For Sipho’s prospective employer — a company that employs just 40 people — the outcome was devastating. They couldn’t match the R970,000 annual salary benchmark, nor could they register as a “trusted employer” because they hadn’t invested R100 million. Their only option was to withdraw the offer and continue operating short-staffed. Sipho returned home, qualified but excluded.
A year after its introduction, South Africa’s points-based work visa system is littered with stories like Sipho’s. The framework was supposed to bring clarity, fairness, and consistency. Instead, it has created new barriers, favouring large corporations and high earners while locking out the small to medium enterprises (SMEs) that make up most of South Africa’s economy.
The Promise That Sparked Hope
When the system was announced, it was widely praised as a bold step forward. Policymakers spoke of transparency and predictability — of a data-driven framework that would replace the arbitrary decision-making of the past. The promise was simple: a clear, merit-based path for foreign professionals to contribute to the economy.
And for a while, it seemed to work. The process was smoother, the paperwork more standardised, and the Department of Labour’s involvement — long the bane of general work visa applications — was finally removed. But as the system matured, its unintended consequences became impossible to ignore.
The Barrier of Qualifications and Salaries
The first major flaw lies in the qualification and salary thresholds. To reach the required 100 points, an applicant must either hold a master’s degree or earn close to R1 million per year. Those with a bachelor’s degree (NQF level 7) still need to earn at least R970,000 annually to qualify.
This effectively limits eligibility to executives, senior professionals, and top earners — individuals more likely to work for multinational corporations or JSE-listed companies. Meanwhile, tradesmen, mid-level professionals, and skilled artisans are excluded entirely, even though they are the very people many South African employers are struggling to find.
It’s an absurd outcome when you consider that the median salary in South Africa sits between R15,000 and R20,000 a month. By setting the bar so high, the points-based system ignores the realities of the labour market and alienates the businesses that drive employment and innovation — the SMEs that make up 60–70% of the country’s employers.
Inconsistencies That Undermine Confidence
The system was meant to eliminate inconsistent decision-making, yet the opposite has often been true. We’ve seen visa applications that meet every requirement rejected without coherent explanation.
One particularly troubling trend is the conflation of criteria: applicants in the critical skills category — who automatically qualify for 100 points — have still been refused on the grounds of “insufficient work experience.” That’s not how the framework was designed to operate.
Even more worrying is the variation between embassy adjudications abroad and local adjudications in South Africa. An applicant can be approved in one country and rejected in another for identical reasons. This lack of uniformity undermines confidence in a system that was supposed to be rules-based and predictable.
The Trusted Employer Scheme: For Giants Only
The Trusted Employer Scheme, intended to fast-track reliable companies, is another example of good intentions gone wrong. To qualify, a company must have invested R100 million (or committed R200 million) and employ at least 100 staff.
That may sound reasonable on paper, but in practice, it restricts the privilege to a handful of corporate giants. The thousands of small and medium enterprises that actually fuel South Africa’s economy are automatically disqualified. For them, the ability to hire skilled foreign professionals could mean the difference between growth and stagnation. Yet the policy, as it stands, effectively tells them: you’re too small to matter.
Progress, Yes — But Not Enough
To its credit, the points-based system has brought some structure and predictability. The removal of the Department of Labour bottleneck was a major win, and the attempt to codify visa eligibility was a long-overdue step forward.
But those positives are overshadowed by exclusionary criteria that simply don’t align with South Africa’s economic realities. By tying eligibility to inflated salary bands and elite qualifications, the framework risks deepening inequality and shutting out the very workforce that could drive growth.
The Way Forward
If South Africa is serious about attracting the skills it needs, the system must evolve. Future iterations should:
- Rebalance qualification and salary thresholds to reflect the local market,
- Standardise adjudication to ensure uniform decision-making across offices, and
- Open up the Trusted Employer Scheme to smaller firms that play a critical role in job creation.
This is not about lowering standards; it’s about making the system fair and responsive to the realities on the ground.
A Call to the Advisory Board
The Immigration Advisory Board has a vital opportunity to correct course. The points-based system was meant to modernise South Africa’s immigration landscape, not create a new hierarchy of privilege. If left unchanged, it will continue to serve the few while leaving the majority of employers and skilled workers behind.
South Africa’s economy doesn’t just need high-end executives; it needs engineers, diesel plant fitters, technicians, developers, and artisans — the people who keep the country running. The question now is whether the system will evolve to include them. One year on, the points-based system stands at a crossroads: it can either become a true driver of inclusive growth, or remain an obstacle disguised as reform.