South Africa is facing a massive skills shortage and the situation is only getting worse. While we currently lack at least half a million skilled and semi-skilled workers, red tape and bungling in the Department of Home Affairs choke the country’s ability to benefit from foreign expertise.
So following the recent appointment of a new Director-General, Mavuso Msimang, Special Assignment turns its lens on one of the government’s most dysfunctional departments, notoriously riddled with corruption, fraud and management chaos.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of asylum seekers and refugees. Every year, thousands of people fleeing for their lives, come to South Africa in search of peace. But this country offers little asylum. The process of getting refugee status can be more dehumanising and traumatic than the horror they were escaping. At present, it can take an asylum seeker up to two years to get a foot in the door of Home Affair’s Pretoria office. And this is just the start of the struggle to get the right papers. To get full refugee status can take over ten years.
In the meantime, asylum seekers and refugees cannot work or support themselves. Their permits lack credibility and, because of their temporary nature, make employers reluctant to hire them. So doctors, engineers, university lecturers – skilled people that our country desperately needs – are reduced to eking out an existence in the informal market. Many land up destitute sleeping on the floors of the Central Methodist Church in Joburg. For South Africa it is a tragic waste of human resources.
“No Entry” is produced by Sasha Wales-Smith and was filmed by Jan de Klerk, Roy Freeman and Byron Taylor.
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