Zimbabweans Skills  Dominates SA Labour Market

By Ziyah News Reporter

Johannesburg – Statistics from the South African Ministry of Home Affairs show Zimbabweans are dominant in the critical skills Labour market for as revealed by the number of critical skills visas issued to foreigners by Pretoria.

Since 2020, the South African Department of Home Affairs issued 4913 critical skills visas to foreign nationals from at least 100 countries and of those 1794 were given to Zimbabweans. That is 36. 56 % of the total.

So dominant are Zimbabwean skills that the second spot on the visas issued, India is a distant behind at 918 representing 18.68% of the total.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber revealed the information in a recent parliamentary Q&A, where he noted that the department exhausted “all efforts” to determine that no South African citizens or permanent residents had the necessary skills and qualifications to fill the positions before issuing the visas to foreign nationals.

“This was done in collaboration with the Department of Higher Education and Training. The methodology used to determine the critical skills is detailed in a Technical Report on Critical Skills published on the website DHET,”

Majority of  critical skills visas issued to Zimbabweans were trainee auditors, followed by integrated development, software developers, nursing, and ICT systems analysts.

Here are the list of top 20 countries contributing to critical skills labor in South Africa.