A letter by a group of French businesses, who collectively employ more than 65 000 South Africans, has frustrated Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso with its detailing of significant problems facing the businesses in obtaining vital visas to enable French nationals working in South Africa.

“The letter set out the massive problems the companies have had in trying to secure work visas for key personnel – engineers, business controllers and experts needed to run specialised equipment,” she outlines in her latest weekly newsletter on August 29.

Many of the firms’ existing senior managers have not been able to get work permits despite submitting all required documentation, adds Mavuso.

“They describe it as a ‘nightmare’, making it impossible for them to manage their businesses and leaving them with little choice but to delay investment and consider relocating their African operations to other countries.”

The problem, she says, seems to have arisen since the centralisation of all visa application processing by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) in Pretoria. “I am told there are backlogs of thousands and only a handful of staff are processing these.”

Mavuso adds that there also appears to be an inability by the DHA to prioritise different applications, with everyone from junior engineers to CEOs stuck in the same backlog.

She notes that it is difficult to understand what the underlying problem is, for example, management failures, xenophobia or some kind of political dysfunction. “Either way, it is having catastrophic effects on the ability of business to deal with the skills crisis that is holding back investment and growth.”

Meanwhile, Mavuso says organised business had a “good meeting” last week with the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom).

Necom was established in terms of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s energy crisis plan.

“We discussed the support it needs from business to achieve a rapid rollout of new generating capacity and improve the stability of existing infrastructure. [As a result of the meeting], I believe business will be able to assist, especially in terms of mobilising scarce skills that are needed [such as] engineers, project managers and others,” she says.

Mavuso points out that, despite the “galvanising” Necom meeting aimed at finding and attracting the skills critically needed to deal with the energy crisis, the French visa issue served to make Necom endeavours difficult.

Nonetheless, she says BLSA will persist in finding ways to support Necom and government more broadly, but that it would be “so much easier” if the bureaucratic and regulatory functions, like processing visas, were working the way they are meant to.

“This is not even a call for policy change. This is implementation of existing policy. The Operation Vulindlela programme of the Presidency and the National Treasury has made good progress on several fronts, including getting a scarce skills list finalised and pushing forward with e-visas for tourists,” states Mavuso.

However, she says the apparent collapse of the DHA’s ability to manage existing applications for skilled visas affects all businesses that need foreign skills as part of their workforces. This includes the urgent need to bring in foreign skills to fix our energy system and build new capacity.

“It should be obvious that these are the kind of skills that create jobs in South Africa, not take them. The 65 000 workers that the group of French companies employ are at risk if those companies cannot bring in the skills they need.

“Eventually they will be forced to curtail operations and reduce investment and jobs will be lost,” cautions Mavuso.

Meanwhile, she says that, in terms of the prevailing electricity generation deficit faced in South Africa, every day that the country faces load-shedding deals another “blow” to the economy and its ability to employ people.

“Bringing in electrical engineers and other specialists, many to replace the experienced and skilled engineers who were hounded out of the country during State capture, is critical to resolving the energy crisis,” Mavuso says.