The end of a strange luncheon

19 April 2021

William Saunderson-Meyer’s article  The scatterlings and swallows of South Africa, reminded me of a time before the onset of the coronavirus epidemic when I tagged along on the occasion of a strange luncheon. All present at the luncheon were connected, though most of them had never met.  Rather the key common denominator was that they all at one time went to the same fancy Ivy League College in America – the kind that produces fortune 500 CEOs, Supreme Court judges and the occasional presidential candidate. 

You see, when one attends this sort of institution, one leaves with certain advantages to compensate for the eye-watering student debt and an unusual intimacy with one’s own pronouns. Among these benefits is access to the past pupil intranet, the internal alma mater Facebook. When an alumnus pitches up in a foreign city alone – in say, Johannesburg – all they need do is search the platform and invite whoever else is around for organic botanical G&Ts. This is how the One Percent network, with a luminous digital alumni Bat Signal.

What are these Ivy League alumni doing in Joburg? Well, it turns out that after four or more years of ultra-elite higher education, they had grown a little bored with America, its Orange Bad Man and campaigns against cultural appropriation. The world is big and there are other places that might benefit from their fancy degrees and boundless altruism.

Sunny South Africa ranks as a good destination: flights are direct, coffee culture is sophisticated, the locals have cute accents and at the end of a long, hard day saving the global south, one can enjoy first world wine at third world prices.

Of course, not everything is perfect in South Africa. Attendees at the luncheon had learnt about load shedding and worried about attacks on Uber drivers. They also never seemed to be satisfied with the speed of the internet.

But without doubt the main topic of contention was precisely the same bureaucratic barrier identified in Saunderson-Meyer’s piece, the Scarce Skills List. To recap, the Scarce Skills List is a compilation of all the jobs in the country for which a foreign worker might conceivably get a job-related visa.

The list is drawn up by civil servants somewhere in the Department of Home Affairs and it has been outdated for years. President Ramaphosa promised at his most recent State of the Nation Address that after a two-year delay, a proper review would be completed. A new list of potential jobs types is currently being developed but nothing has yet been finalised officially. 

The problem is that leaving a task such as this to government officials – as opposed to a more flexible, industry centric approach – is that it tends to result in a lack of imagination. The members of this gathering illustrated this well.

Take, for example, the woman who is involved with finding international donors for a local university. She couldn't be accommodated on the scarce skill list. Similarly, no visa was available for the former corporate banker pioneering a new educational model in an inner-city school, nor for the organiser of women’s empowerment loans in some long-lost township.

The multi-award-winning, avant-garde artist and digital investigations journalist at least had a chance because there was a special section for creative workers. Unfortunately, Home Affairs did not put it on their website so it took access to a smart lawyer to know about it. It wasn't all gloom though, sheep shearers had a special space on the list and the new updates suggest that caravan sales people may be added soon.  

A lot of focus on scarce skills often goes to the older more moneyed potential immigrants that we can get to come to our shores. But these International graduates with their far-reaching connections and innovative ideas have equally much to offer South Africa.

A sure method of keeping these instagramming globetrotters away however is talk of expensive immigration lawyers and traumatic trips to Home Affairs. There are many other places in the world – even on the continent – that are happy to have their scarce skills.

As a result, almost no one from the Luncheon is still in our country.  Who knows when, or even if, they will ever be back?  An occasional updating of the Scarce Skills List is not going to solve the problem. The reign of the digital nomad has dawned, it's time our immigration procedures got out the dark ages. 

Benji is a radio broadcast host on 101.9 ChaiFM