By Thapelo Molefe
The Portfolio Committee on Higher Education has raised concerns about the employment of foreign academics at South African universities, saying some institutions have more foreign national professors than black, Indian and coloured professors combined.
The committee received a briefing from the Department of Higher Education and Training on the employment of foreign academics across the post-school education and training sector on Wednesday.
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Committee chairperson Tebogo Letsie said the committee’s interest in the matter predated recent investigations into allegedly fraudulent visas and was rooted in concerns about whether institutions were complying with South African laws governing employment and immigration.
“We support the policy framework on internationalisation, but ours was are we following, are we doing so, are we doing the internationalisation following the country’s laws, especially the Employment Services Act and the Immigration Act,” Letsie said.
He rejected suggestions that the committee’s scrutiny of the issue amounted to xenophobia, saying the focus was on compliance with the law and transformation in higher education.
Letsie said preliminary analysis of data submitted to the committee revealed that several universities had more foreign national professors than black, Indian and coloured professors combined.
According to Letsie, the institutions included the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of Pretoria, the University of the Free State and the University of Venda.
At UCT, he said, 39.7% of professors were white, 39.3% were foreign nationals and only 22% were black, Indian and coloured professors combined.
He questioned whether government investments aimed at developing South African academics were yielding sufficient results.
“Government 20 years ago introduced a fund to close the gap of blacks, Indians and coloured to be at that level. Are we saying government continues to waste funds on a scheme called National Research Foundation (NRF) if at least four institutions that I’ve told you about today, we still have more foreign national professors as compared to a combination,” he said.
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Higher Education and Training Minister Buti Manamela said the department agreed that institutions must comply with all applicable laws when employing foreign nationals.
“The Immigration Act makes it a criminal offence for an institution to employ a person without a valid work visa. The Employment Services Act requires that South Africans and permanent residents be prioritised, and that foreign nationals be appointed only where the skill is demonstrably unavailable at home,” Manamela said.
He added that the Employment Equity Act required that international recruitment should not be used to undermine transformation.
“Any institution that breaches these is not exercising academic freedom. It is breaking the law, and it will be treated accordingly,” he said.
Manamela cautioned against treating all foreign nationals as a single category, noting that many individuals counted in the figures were naturalised South African citizens or permanent residents.
“When we collapse the citizen or the permanent resident or the critical skills visa holder and the temporary contractor into a single suspect category, I don’t think we are clarifying a policy problem. We are actually feeding a politics that this House should be careful not to serve,” he said.
The minister also acknowledged shortcomings in the department’s data, saying some universities had struggled to reconcile staff records with visa and residency information.
He announced several measures to improve oversight, including reforms to the Higher Education Management Information System, a joint task team with the Department of Home Affairs and Universities South Africa to address visa-related challenges, and the appointment of a 19-member advisory panel to develop a standardised framework for international academic appointments.
Manamela said the long-term solution was to strengthen the pipeline of South African academics rather than restricting international recruitment.
“We have to produce more South African doctorates. There shouldn’t be any question about that,” he said.
The minister said the department had allocated 85 new generation academic posts, supported 92 emerging scholars and funded 47 doctoral candidates through university doctoral programmes as part of efforts to develop local academic talent.
